The Most Impressive Feats Of Human Engineering (ft. Mark Hamill) | Super Structures Episodes | Spark

in a sheltered cove off the eastern coast of canada a modern superstructure takes shape the heaviest oil platform ever constructed designed to survive one of the harshest environments in the world 80-foot waves sub-zero temperatures and multi-million ton icebergs guard a 3 billion barrel oil field many men have died seeking to claim this treasure soon a state-of-the-art oil platform will take to these treacherous waters hoping to conquer an ocean never before defeated and become the first superstructure to survive the grand banks in a deadly quest for oil [Music] [Music] [Music] autumn 1991. near st john's newfoundland a massive superstructure sprawls out along the edge of the north atlantic each day 3 000 workers brave 30 degree temperatures and arctic winds to complete a monumental task the construction of the hibernia gbs when it's finished powerful tugs will tow this huge oil rig 200 miles out to sea there it will become a city above the waves the home of 280 workers attempting to extract 615 million barrels of oil from the bottom of the north atlantic if those workers are to succeed and survive engineers must build an oil platform unlike any other most oil rigs float on the surface of the sea but a gbs is a fundamentally different design gbs stands for gravity-based structure a colossal concrete tower cemented to the ocean floor from this concrete base rise four 360-foot concrete and steel shafts strong enough to hold a 37 000 ton platform 100 feet above the sea when finished this modern technological wonder will stand 735 feet tall and weigh over 1.2 million tons nearly as tall as the golden gate bridge and three times heavier it will take seven years to build the hibernia gbs at a cost of four and a half billion dollars four times the amount spent on building the world's tallest skyscraper the patronus towers in malaysia the giant rig is being designed and built by canada's hibernia corporation one of the world's largest oil consortiums the project is so huge that no one construction company can do all the work in seven years building the hibernia gbs must be a worldwide effort while hibernia builds the oil rig's massive concrete base in newfoundland construction firms in italy and south korea will build the platform's upper structures giant steel modules where the oil workers will work and live sea going barges will tow the 8 000 ton modules across the oceans for final assembly with the base in newfoundland [Music] the first challenge facing the builders of the gbs was finding a place to build it a gbs must be built at the water's edge because moving such a huge structure over land would be impossible hibernia corporation chose a coastal inlet called bull arm 80 miles northwest of st john's as the best place to build their giant rig bull arms channel was deep enough to allow the finnish gbs to be towed out to sea while its tall cliffs and sheltered cove would protect the construction site from newfoundland's harsh weather [Music] for weeks crews worked around the clock transforming bull arm into a state-of-the-art construction site earth movers had to excavate nine miles of roads just to reach the bull-arm area huge cranes dredged a dry dock construction site at the water's edge bulldozers dumped over 850 000 cubic yards of rock into the ocean to form the protective barriers surrounding the dry dock site now 400 acres of what was once forest have become a small city of 3 000 people as they begin their task these engineers and construction workers know that the oil rig they are building at bull arm will have to do more than just pump oil to extract that oil the hibernia gbs will have to survive the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world [Music] over the years many sailors have perished battling the fury of the grand banks located 200 miles southeast of newfoundland this legendary body of water is one of the world's most abundant fishing grounds it's also the final resting spot for more sunken ships than anywhere else in the world in 1991 these waters produced what meteorologists described as the perfect storm 100 foot waves buffeted by 80 mile per hour winds destroyed two ships and killed seven seamen in just one night it's a very harsh environment the wave and the weather are about the same as in the northern north sea in addition to that we have icebergs million ton icebergs and thousands of them they're feared by mariners who call the grand banks iceberg alley where the tallest iceberg ever recorded a 550-foot mountain of ice nearly as tall as the washington monument once floated when it's finished the hibernia gbs will be towed 200 miles out to sea and anchored to the ocean floor in the heart of the grand banks just 150 miles south of where the hibernia gbs will someday stand lies the grand bank's most famous victim nearly two miles below the surface beautifully preserved in the sub-freezing waters lies the titanic this superstructure was once thought to be indestructible it's an eerie reminder of what can go wrong when confidence in our engineering prowess goes too far in his 30 years at sea captain mark turner has seen all too often the consequences of underestimating the north atlantic's power there's nothing unsinkable there's nothing infallible man or machine so it's uh and we have to accept that fact and you know the titanic is a good example but it's reality we are a man and we uh we're very weak in many ways we can build whatever we uh choose to build however against mother nature it's it's mere toothpick [Music] now 79 years later the hibernia's designers know that they must do better than the builders of the titanic the gbs must be able to survive the grand banks for at least 25 years hundreds of lives and billions of dollars are at stake for beneath these treacherous waters lies a petroleum bonanza during the early 1970s marine seismic data and satellite imaging hinted that the grand banks might be rich in oil geologists suspected that 150 million years ago the seabed beneath the ground banks was a fertile river system teeming with life as the sea covered the land layers of sediment buried dead plants and animals downward pressure from these layers of rock turned the decaying remains into oil for 10 years oil companies drilled hundreds of wells and discovered nothing prospecting for oil in this region is like searching for a needle in a haystack then in 1979 the hibernia corporation discovered an immense oil field 200 miles off the coast and 12 000 feet below the ocean floor would prove to be the seventh largest recoverable petroleum deposit in the world worth 11 billion dollars to whomever could extract it for hibernia it was the strike of a the hibernia field is is a giant we have over three billion barrels of oil in place that's three billion barrels in the ground now the trick for us as a reservoir team is how do we get that oil out of the ground in 1982 hibernia began exploring the new oil field but before the drilling could begin tragedy struck one of the first exploratory rigs to arrive over the hibernia field was an enormous platform called the ocean ranger it stood 340 feet tall with an upper deck the size of two football fields and a crew of 84 veteran oil workers unlike a gbs the ocean ranger was not cemented to the ocean floor it was designed to float above an undersea oil field buoyed by eight huge water tanks called ballasts floating rigs had operated safely in some of the world's harshest environments ocean ranger was reputed to be the safest oil rig in the world designed to survive 110 foot waves and 100 mile per hour winds in heavy seas or high winds water in the ballast tanks could be transferred from one tank to another to stabilize the platform for 15 months the ocean ranger successfully withstood the grand bank's onslaught of wind ice and wave but on february 15 1982 the unthinkable suddenly became a reality it was cold it was freezing spray conditions extreme weather conditions sea conditions were between 50 and 60 feet everybody was trying to work as best they could but the weather conditions were so extreme it was made things close to impossible 80 mile an hour winds and 55 foot waves pounded the 25 000 ton ocean ranger the crew radioed for help controllers worked frantically to stabilize the rig as the platform began to list heavily to one side emergency crews desperately tried to correct the problem but the pounding waves made it impossible the captain issued the order to abandon the rig 20 minutes pass before the first rescue vessels arrived the rescuers discovered the platform of the ocean ranger floating upside down the storm's massive waves had flipped the giant rig for seven days search teams looked for survivors they found none only 22 bodies were recovered all 84 men aboard the ocean ranger had frozen to death in the icy north atlantic we'll never forget about ocean ranger here in newfoundland catastrophes such as those i think will stay etched in all of our minds as they build the hibernia gbs the workers are haunted by the terrible fate of the capsized rig almost everybody working at bull arm lost a friend or relative on the ocean ranger but the disaster has also inspired the designers of the hibernia gbs to construct the safest platform possible they know the rig will have to survive 100-foot waves hurricane-strength winds and a collision with a million-ton iceberg the largest iceberg ever recorded 200 feet taller and five times heavier than the statue of liberty scientists must learn more about the true strength of their icy enemy they must embark on an unusual journey an experiment never before attempted a quest to fathom the power of the ice [Music] the construction of the hibernia gbs has united american and canadian oil companies in an historic alliance together with the canadian government they're investing over four billion dollars in a search to understand the power of icebergs and construct the world's safest oil rig the world's first oil platform capable of withstanding a collision with a massive iceberg from january to june any ship navigating the grand banks must steer clear of icebergs something easier said than done 85 of an iceberg's mass lies hidden beneath the waves between 10 and 20 000 form in greenland and the canadian arctic each year carried by a strong southern current almost 1 000 icebergs drift through the north atlantic the icebergs begin to melt as they reach the warmer waters of the grand banks but a million-ton berg the biggest ever seen could take up to two months to disappear completely ships can steer clear of icebergs but the hibernia gbs can't its massive underwater base the gravity-based structure is permanently cemented to the ocean's floor the enormous weight of the gbs will ensure that the hibernia will never capsize like the ocean ranger but this stability has a price by making hibernia immovable the gbs design virtually assures that the giant rig will someday be rammed by a drifting iceberg my fear really is the just the unknown of the ice there are so many unknown variables about it with regards to frequencies with regards to movement determined to fathom an iceberg's destructive force scientists from the center for cold ocean resource engineering or c-corps devise a unique experiment never before has the impact of an iceberg been measured in a real environment only small samples have been crushed in laboratory experiments to test the power of moving ice sea core scientists decide to ram icebergs into an island in the grand scheme of things certainly not a hundred thousand ton iceberg we were talking pieces of maybe one thousand tons maybe up to two thousand tons something like that which is still a fair sized chunk of ice nobody knows for certain how size speed and buoyancy will affect the force exerted by an iceberg when it collides with a stationary structure to measure this c-core scientist greg crocker and a team of engineers build a 21 by 21-foot panel and attach it to the side of a remote island in northern newfoundland half under water and half above this metal panel uses electronic sensors to record the force an iceberg exerts as it strikes the clip only one problem remains capturing and towing an iceberg into the panel crocker and his ice wrangler search for a likely candidate their plan is to attach an anchor to a bird and tow it to shore using a strong tugboat but this proves difficult the anchors generally didn't hold um the towing vessel had about a 10 ton pull and it was enough to essentially pull the anchors out of the out of the ice c-core scientists re-evaluate their approach and decide to lasso the iceberg instead by encircling the bird with a rope connected to the back of a tug they tow mammoth chunks of ice to their island laboratory and send them crashing into the electronic panel at first the results seemed baffling sensors in the electronic panel recorded less force from the impacts of giant icebergs than from far smaller eye samples tested in labs but c-corps scientists think there's a simple explanation in the wild icebergs are constantly melting as they melt they weaken although it looks rock hard a 100 000 ton iceberg has many weak points within its seemingly solid mass when a bird of this size collides with a stationary object its weak points diminish the force of the impact since previous laboratory tests had used only small compacted eye samples researchers had remained unaware of these critical weaknesses of larger birds the c-corps experiments proved for the first time that internal weaknesses significantly diminishes the force of an iceberg's impact no one had ever directly measured the forces and pressures that an iceberg exerts on a structure when they interact and you can calculate on paper what they might be until the cows come home but there's a lot of confidence built up when you actually have some data which tells you in the real world what those forces are going to be the revolutionary results of c-corps iceberg impact tests reassured hibernia gbs designers that their platform could survive a collision with a 6 million ton iceberg but crocker warns people of becoming overconfident after all six million tons of ice could crush an entire city block you need to design for a certain ice load and some acceptable level of risk because you can never reduce risk to zero we don't try and deny that those risks are there we try and design structures that are safe within that environment over 30 gbs platforms operate in the north sea off scotland and norway where icebergs never come these rigs have tall slender base frames designed to offer minimal resistance to powerful waves an iceberg's force would crush them to extract oil from the hibernia field a rig must sit directly in the iceberg's path the hibernia's designers must invent a new defense against this deadly threat they decide to build a huge ice wall surrounding the underwater base of the platform at first the ice wall appears to be a disorganized mesh of steel rebar and concrete but it's actually an intricate plan inspired by designs which strengthen the foundations of skyscrapers to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake following a detailed map workers place each steel beam in an exact location these beams will help to reinforce the strength of the concrete after 69 000 tons of these beams are set in place workers pour high strength concrete around them it's essential that the pouring of the 400 000 tons of concrete be precise if it dries unevenly a weak spot can develop leading to the complete collapse of the hibernia gbs at sea a process known as slip forming ensures a perfect pour slip forming calls for building a wooden platform around the inside edge of the gbs workers pour concrete through holes in the platform and use metal shoots to distribute it evenly around the steel bars as the concrete dries a computer raises the wooden platform creating an even pour for three months this process continues the outer walls rise nearly three feet per day slowly the revolutionary design of the hibernia gbs takes shape four and a half foot thick walls soar 280 feet high the jagged outer wall is actually 16 reinforced concrete teeth designed to break apart an iceberg if it collides with the rig inside the massive concrete shell engineers install a 50-foot thick ice belt this gap between the outer and inner walls of the base will someday be filled with over 550 000 tons of iron ore when the gps is in its final position at sea engineers will pour the iron ore mixed with sea water into the ice belt it's a protection for the entire facility i mean it's it's the people it's it's the drilling it's everything is protected by that ice wall everybody always says when you look at that ice wall against an iceberg we think we'll win if an iceberg strikes the hibernia gbs the outer teeth will chew away the ice while the inner ice belt will absorb the iceberg's impact distributing the force throughout the base but before the gbs faces icebergs on the open sea its five upper modules must be completed in these steel homes the 280 men and women aboard the hibernia rig will eat sleep and work for three weeks at a time they'll face dangers oil riggers never encounter on land they'll be isolated in the middle of the north atlantic 200 miles from the nearest rescue station anyone who would dare to live and work in this deadly environment must first undergo a grueling frightening ordeal a rite of passage that could make the difference between life and death 400 000 tons of concrete poured around 90 000 tons of steel the hibernia gbs stands ready for battle its builders have designed its jagged edged ice wall to defeat the most powerful icebergs in the grand banks the gbs is so enormous it seems indestructible but even superstructures are only as good as the people who operate them not even cutting edge technology can guarantee the lives of workers aboard a platform in the middle of the grand banks it's not a an environment in which we are designed to operate as as as animals ourselves so that the ocean is a an unforgiving place to be if uh if you don't take account of what dangers it can present in 1982 the ocean ranger disaster taught newfoundland's oil workers the deadly consequences of being unprepared for an emergency when their rig capsized the ocean rangers crew panicked terrified workers scrambled to lifeboats and jumped into the freezing water for all death came quickly the temperatures off the ground banks can vary to sub-zero to just above zero if you are in the water forget it you have maybe a menace 84 men died on ocean ranger because they had no idea how to save themselves in an emergency as a result of that tragedy all canadian offshore oil workers must now complete an intensive survival training course before they begin working at sea the hibernia corporation takes the dangers of working in the grand banks very seriously it spends over two million dollars each year on survival training employees who will operate the hibernia gbs must undergo a one week program the most grueling in the industry it's an exhausting often frightening ordeal those who fail lose their jobs the offshore survival training course begins by introducing each student to the survival suit designed to keep water out and warmth in these suits will keep a person afloat in the worst sea conditions in the north atlantic an unprotected swimmer will succumb to hypothermia within 15 minutes a swimmer wearing a survival suit can survive in 20 degree water for six hours but knowing how to use a survival suit is only a start unlike any other survival training in the world the hibernia program requires that each student leave the safety of the training pool and experience the cold brutal reality of the north atlantic first hand out here students get a frigid wake-up call at sea you have a different attitude you you realize that gee this is the real thing i have to perform i have to now my training is actually going to surface and i've got to use that training at sea each student must demonstrate his or her ability to swim in the ocean jettison life rafts and board rescue boats they're taught to work as a team in the middle of the grand banks teamwork is essential if one person panics many may die uh it's better to have a cool mind appreciate that you work as a team and that you're as one integral human that way you will survive you had to think positively situations occur but if you're well trained you can deal with those situations and you can save that on your own life but those of the of your friends next year to save lives the hibernia gbs is equipped with eight state-of-the-art lifeboats each lifeboat is self-contained motorized and impossible to capsize they're designed to survive a storm as powerful as the one that destroyed the ocean ranger but mustering everybody to a lifeboat station and launching the crap takes time time offshore oil workers may not have so the oil platform is equipped with three salantic skyscapes located at each lifeboat station these nylon shoots propel a person 100 feet down to the ocean's surface to a waiting life raft using the salantic skyscapes and the lifeboats the entire crew can quickly abandon the platform unfortunately a fast evacuation may be necessary sitting on top of combustible oil and gas any oil rig must be prepared for the possibility of a devastating explosion [Music] tragically it's happened before in the early hours of july 6 1988 the piper alpha oil rig in the north sea exploded a gas leak ignited an enormous fire which burned for 15 hours 167 men died most of them asleep in their beds the rig was completely destroyed an inquiry into the piper alpha disaster concluded that if its workers had been trained in basic fire fighting techniques they might have survived working in the middle of the world's angriest ocean 200 miles from the nearest fire station oil riggers aboard the hibernia gbs will have to fight their own fires to have any chance against a deadly fire they must be trained in firefighting hibernia's workers are not expected to become expert firefighters their training will help them prevent a fire from spreading until professional support arrives if it arrives in time the journey to hibernia's isolated home takes 16 hours by boat an hour and 30 minutes by helicopter the platform's most vital link to the mainland is also one of the most dangerous means of air travel more than once choppers carrying workers to their oil rigs have crashed into the sea for this reason any person who will someday fly to the hibernia gbs must first pass the most frightening test of all the helicopter dunk tank the helicopter dog is that is the be all in now this is i think that is the clincher for people just the fact of doing several trials of being dipped in a prototype of a helicopter and trying to get out through the window on this final day of their safety training students experience what everyone hopes will never happen when a helicopter crashes into the sea there's very little time to react to survive passengers must keep calm and know exactly what to do immediately they have to knock the emergency windows out if the helicopter sinks the water pressure will make it impossible to open anything then they must suppress their overpowering urge to flee and wait because most helicopters will quickly flip upside down only then is it safe to escape it's amazing how disoriented you are initially because i mean everything's turning and all of a sudden you're hanging there upside down and again it's the training that helps you and because what you find is they said as we do this hold on to the window frame and so when you're upside down all of a sudden you realize hey there's my window frame i'm oriented you pull yourself out the window and you're up to the surface over 3 000 men and women push themselves through the offshore survival training program each year most make it but when some are faced with a sobering reality of what might go wrong they walk away one percent of those who begin the survival training program never make it to the end even with all the training and all the safety precautions the risks seem too great as the final assembly of the hibernia gbs nears the specter of the ocean ranger tragedy rises once again if the design of this platform isn't perfect over three times as many lives could be lost lots of things can go wrong and we work hard to make sure things don't go wrong safety is really number one for us and i mean if you don't get that right all these other things don't matter because we've got now 270 people that call that that little platform out in the middle of the north atlantic home frequency distribution of the waves trying to understand how powerful waves can capsize oil rigs industry investigators decide to recreate the ocean ranger disaster to accomplish this they turn to the national research council of canada's institute of marine dynamics or imd and its indoor ocean nearly as large as a football field this huge basin holds up to 1.5 million gallons of water it can accurately recreate the stormiest ocean environment we'll put a structure or ship in the basin and we can have waves coming from one or more directions much like the real ocean and in addition to that we can superimpose a current on top of that working at a scale of 40 to 1 institute engineers build a model of the ocean ranger rig and place it in the center of the indoor ocean using large metal flaps along the edge of the basin they create a one and a half foot wave the indoor oceans equivalent of a 60-foot swell everyone's surprise the ocean ranger stays afloat [Music] puzzled by this mystery investigators look for another possible cause they listen again to the final communications from the crew of the doomed rig and make a crucial discovery during the fatal storm an open porthole in the ballast control room allowed water in short-circuiting the computers without computers workers couldn't operate the ballast tanks which could stabilize the rig as it lost balance its bow dipped down perilously close to the ocean's surface at imd scientists recreate this dangerous imbalance using their model of the ocean ranger then they send a succession of 60-foot waves hurling towards the model they hit pay dirt the ocean ranger flips [Music] i think most of the problems with the ocean ranger were sort of a combination of incredible bad luck and and lack of training in fact the rig was quite stable it wanted to stay afloat it was just a combination of an extremely large wave that ultimately flipped the rig over or an exceptionally poor ballast condition the sobering revelations from imd's investigation strengthened hibernia's resolve to build the safest oil platform in the world a rig capable of surviving 100-foot waves in the open seas the platform must pass one more crucial test or risk being battered to pieces by the fury of the north atlantic from italy and south korea enormous barges arrive off the coast of newfoundland transporting the modules that make up the upper platform of the hibernia oil rig each of these 8 000 ton steel compartments weighs 1 000 tons more than the eiffel tower carefully workers offload the five modules onto a pier and spend seven months welding and bolting them together united the entire top side platform weighs 37 000 tons standing 370 feet tall once mated to the gbs the hibernia rig will become a 1.2 million ton superstructure towering 735 feet from top to bottom but even an oil rig of this size is destined to receive a battery from the huge swells of the grand banks over time repeated blows of powerful waves may fatally damage the rig to avoid waves constantly crashing into its underside the platform will hover 100 feet above the ocean's surface the lives of 300 workers and the success of a 4 billion dollar project rest upon this design strategy before they mate the platform to the gbs engineers need proof that their design will be wave resistant once again they turn to the indoor ocean in st john's newfoundland here they will test whether the distance from the bottom of the upper platform to the sea's surface is high enough to prevent waves from battering the platform's underbelly it's much better to fail here or find out the events that are going to cause a failure here than it is in real life of course i mean model tests are not cheap but they're certainly cheaper than the real real thing the full fury of the grand banks is unleashed in miniature the unique design of the hibernia gbs sends waves crashing higher than any other oil platform ever has engineers are worried they send 75-foot waves the largest swells generated by most atlantic storms barreling towards the platform when they strike the enormous base the waves cascade upward but the underside of the top side platform remains untouched the hibernia gbs defeats the indoor ocean reassured the platform's design will survive the force of even massive waves in the grand banks engineers prepare to connect the top side platform to the sunken base the mating procedure begins with the flooding of the dry dock construction site and the toe out of the gbs to deeper water one mile from shore there workers add water to the ballast tanks lowering the gbs until only 18 feet of the four 364 foot shafts are above water they position the platform over the sunken gbs with two huge barges lining up the two structures perfectly they slowly raise the base to meet the topside platform the gps is already in position at the deepwater site only the positioning of the platform over the base remains for 48 hours five tugboat captains position two gigantic barges under the pier holding the five modules they must evenly distribute the weight of the topside platforms across both barges to ensure a safe trip to the sunken gbs it will take 12 hours to position the topside platform over the base precision is essential we had to float at something like two kilometers 1.6 or 1.7 kilometers and then position it within a thumbnail over another structure that's equally as massive but weighs something like 550 000 tons the barges creep towards the sunken base at barely one and a half miles an hour they must float to within 20 inches of the connection point as the top sides reach the gbs a winch system takes over connecting the barges to the sunken base moving the five modules into exact position engineers carefully check the placement they believe it's right on the nose and give the order to raise the gbs workers pump water out of the gbs ballast tanks slowly the base rises up to meet the topside platform five years after its construction began the hibernia gbs oil platform stands as a completed structure [Music] as more water leaves the ballast tanks the hibernia platform rises further above the sea a new giant in the region the mating procedures were fantastic it was uh unbelievable feat and i i sincerely believe that yes it can certainly last 15 years or 20 years towering over the coastal cliffs of eastern newfoundland the hibernia gbs seems indestructible this superstructure of concrete and steel now weighs over 600 000 tons and stands 735 feet four times taller and 10 times heavier than the titanic with such weight and height it would seem that here finally is a man-made structure capable of defeating the grand banks but one more challenge remains the hibernia gbs must leave the calm protected waters where it was built for the first time the platform will be exposed to the extreme conditions of the north atlantic's open sea only then will its builders know whether they have succeeded or failed against the rugged coastline of newfoundland the hibernia gbs stands triumphant a modern superstructure ready to tackle the harshest ocean in the world but before the gbs can pump a single barrel of oil engineers must install it in the middle of the grand banks a 400 mile journey straight through the heart of iceberg alley before the tow out can take place weather conditions must be exactly right the hibernia gbs isn't designed to move easily through the water like a ship moving it to the grand banks will be like towing a 75-storey skyscraper out to sea if strong winds strike on route the 370 foot tall topside platform will act like a giant sail and could capsize the entire structure as hibernia officials monitor the weather nine of the most powerful tubs in the world arrive in bullarm they'll guide the platform out of its home of six years and into the north atlantic although the hibernia oil field is only 200 miles from full arm the gbs must travel twice that far to get there it will follow the coastline to avoid rough seas and icebergs forecasters must predict at least 10 days of clear weather before the tow out can begin but day after day the seas remain too rough for travel along the shores of newfoundland locals gathered a bit of dew to their giant neighbor only to find it's still at blarm [Music] hibernia officials can afford to wait they've budgeted for just such a delay finally after three months the weather clears and the tugs are ready to go the gbs embarks upon its perilous journey six tugs position themselves in front of the platform they'll provide the power to pull it forward meanwhile three tugs take up positions behind the hibernia to provide steering much like a rudder in a small boat with good weather calm seas and a well-mapped course the hibernia gbs has no problem navigating out of her protective cove traveling at two miles per hour she's able to cover nearly 60 miles per day but as the platform reaches its final destination a storm kicks up high seas tugboat captains halt the toe out we arrived at the grand banks in very good time but then we had to wait seven days before we towed it into position because it was very shallow water although they're more than 200 miles offshore the grand banks are not very deep beneath them lies north america's continental shelf depth in the grand banks can be as shallow as 180 feet engineers plan to anchor the hibernia gbs to an underwater peak just 260 feet below the surface but the oil rig's concrete base extends over 250 feet deep as the tugboat captains maneuver it into position there will be only 10 feet of clearance between the gbs and the ocean floor this will be the most dangerous time of all large waves or gusty winds could make the rig bob violently in the water and send it crashing into the seabed the storm rages for almost a week the tugs can only wait finally the weather clears the tugs begin the final phase of the toe out for 70 tens hours tugboat captains carefully maneuver the hibernia toward a target zone just 33 feet long no bigger than a semi-trailer truck remarkably they touch down within five feet of the center mark but before celebrating workers must first lower the hibernia gbs to the ocean floor and add the solid ballast to the interior ice belt this had never been done before we planned a little over a month to do this and it took us too close to two months to to do this above water barges carrying 550 000 tons of iron ore begin to transfer the solid ballast to the gbs gently the tower sinks toward the sea floor as it hits the soft mud below 120 concrete skirts encircling the underbelly of the gbs penetrates seven feet into the sand the skirt is like a bunch of almost like a cookie cutter that is pushed into the bottom and the top of the cook the structure's sitting on the top of the cookie cutter and then once they're in place they they take out the mud that is surrounded by the cookie cutter and then fill it up with cement and that is the thing that sort of glues the structure to the to the bottom barges extract 29 000 cubic yards of water and mud from underneath the gbs while workers insert 100 000 tons of concrete between the skirts as the cement dries it glues the base to the bottom of the ocean and the hibernia gbs is ready to extract the first oil from the grand banks the hibernia's crew will drill over 80 wells 12 000 feet below the ocean floor some of those wells will extract oil others will pump water and gas back into the reservoir to help maintain its geological stability finding the oil however isn't as easy as it sounds what a puzzle you have here you're trying to figure out what's happening three miles down with with very little information in all reality using state-of-the-art computer technology the hibernia reservoir team can work at record speeds as they drill into the oil field scientists on shore can watch in real time exactly what's happening analyzing the data as a team they're able to make immediate adjustments which allow for a more productive well this revolutionary process pays off quickly in just six months the hibernia gbs delivers its first tanker full of oil one month ahead of schedule it's a tribute to the hard work of over 8 000 men and women all over the world who built the hibernia gbs it's also a victory for modern engineering over a hostile environment tempered by an awareness of the ocean's never-ending threat it's a spike we're all specs it's a very small piece of equipment out there in the north atlantic but for now the builders of the hibernia gbs can savor their accomplishment the platform's success has already sparked a search for other lucrative oil reservoirs in the grand banks geologists now speak of drilling in even more remote regions like the arctic long thought to be too dangerous for oil platforms the future of the offshore oil industry rests upon this million-ton superstructure anchored in one of the deadliest oceans in the world as it towers above the waves the hibernia gbs is a proud symbol of human ingenuity's triumph over nature's challenge [Music] [Music] [Music] above ground it seems just another day in london but 60 feet down beneath the historic streets an army of 20 000 people are laboring on europe's most massive engineering project since the channel top [Music] as they burrow under the ancient buildings there must be no mistakes this is the jubilee line extension to the london tube for six years now the engineers have been digging tunnels laying track building stations bringing the world's first subway system into the 21st century this four and a half billion dollar project has encountered more than its share of technical difficulties but overcoming obstacles is the mo for the world's oldest and greatest subway london's underground affectionately known as the train in the drain london is an ancient city when the romans first arrived more than two thousand years ago there was already a settlement here over the centuries it's been ruled by countless kings and queens it is here that shakespeare wrote his plays and modern democracy was born but london today works thanks to something invented 150 years ago and improved constantly since the tube you can appreciate the importance of the tube to london when you think of one of our little tube lines it's the equivalent of seven lanes of highway each way if you did it by car put that on a map of london put the car parks in there is no london left i think if you think of london and london underground you're thinking of the arteries of a body you're thinking about the thing that runs deep through its heart and keeps it alive if the tube has a heart it's oxford circus one of the world's busiest subway stations some 87 million people pass through it each year the london subway has a simple mission move a great number of people efficiently quickly and hopefully safely 800 million travelers actually use the system every year but the risks are enormous when you transport millions of people at high speed through 106 miles of narrow tunnels the tube has seen its share of accidents bombings and fires and it's been more than just a transport system above ground the streets grow more and more congested to remain true to its mission the london subway is now undertaking the jubilee line extension the new line will relieve the desperate pressure on the busy streets as well as reducing the crowding on the subways themselves it will also provide londoners with a safer more efficient way of traveling the line is the first new subway project in london for 20 years it will add 10 miles of new tunnels and give travelers access to areas of london never served by the tube before [Music] it will link to the new business complex at canary wharf and when it's finished we'll be able to carry 50 000 passengers an hour to the millennium dome [Music] many of the engineers for this project are seasoned veterans of the channel tunnel the 31 mile undersea link between england and france but the jubilee line presented these veteran engineers with a greater technical challenge than the chunnel the jubilee line tunnels have to be carefully threaded through an already overcrowded subterranean city packed with older tube lines and a spaghetti of underground service line and cables and there was another challenge the waterlogged soils near the thames river can cause collapses or subsidence fortunately the engineers have at their disposal the latest tunneling technologies but they are on a tight timetable and there is no margin for error no mistakes if we had had a problem in westminster it would have been an international catastrophe it's as bad as that so we had to get it right one of the prime concerns for the extension was tunneling beneath the british houses of parliament and big ben big ben may be an international landmark but the victorian builders gave it poor supports unfortunately two new jubilee line tunnels pass a mere 20 meters from the building's frail foundations if you can imagine westminster itself to one side you've got the big ben structure and all the westminster structures tied in with that building you've got the district and circle line you've got a major sewer running longitudinally with us eight feet in diameter taking half of london sewage through it we've got water mains gas mains and really it's amazing that we managed to hold everything up the bane of all tunnelers is subsidence when tunnels are dug especially through water filled soil there is a natural tendency for the ground above to sink to check the subsidence the engineers came up with an ingenious solution some 7 000 electronic monitoring points were clamped to the historic and the not so historic buildings surrounding the westminster area any movement would instantly be detected by the sensitive monitors [Music] detecting subsidence is one thing preventing it is another so engineers came up with a sophisticated technical fix permeation grunting this process calls for injecting concrete into the ground above the dig sites [Music] first large main shafts were dug from these shafts smaller injection tubes marked in red spread out under the building's most at risk into these shafts and tributaries the cement was carefully injected stabilizing the [Music] soil we're still boring holes in the ground under some of the most expensive real estate in the world a lot of which was actually constructed in the 1880s without proper foundations and is on the verge of tumbling down without assistance from us boring underneath one of these shafts was right outside the houses of parliament to keep traffic disruption to a minimum the work was done at night in fact few commuters ever suspected that they were driving over a 100 foot deep hole on their way to work each morning the jubilee line has been an enormous achievement it surpassed anything in the tunnelling terms that has ever been done in this country before [Applause] [Music] the engineer's precision achieved the necessary stability and big bend stands as straight and tall today as it has for 150 years the difficulties faced by the jubilee line engineers and their ability to devise imaginative solutions are an integral part of london's subway's proud engineering tradition a tradition stretching back to its very beginning in 1850 london was the world's largest city and the most congested two and a half million people were crammed into 60 square miles the city was crowded filthy filled with horses and carts it was choking itself to death the only roads were a network of narrow streets designed centuries earlier something had to be done a more efficient means for moving people from point a to point b needed to be found outside london there was an impressive system of railroads but trains were not allowed into the town itself it took the vision and innovative thinking of charles pearson solicitor to the city of london to devise the perfect solution put the railroads underground it was a bold idea there was only one problem it had never been tried before and it might not work [Music] the metropolitan chose to dig its route by cut and cover largely which of course is basically digging a trench and then covering it over and the easiest place to dig a trench then was in the middle of the road so it became natural in effect to construct an artificial cutting and go down below it was a relatively simple method in terms of technology it is just a trench and then roofed over one final challenge confronted the engineers of the metropolitan line the engines were steam powered in the confined tunnels passengers would be poisoned by the engine's toxic fumes the solution was a steam engine that piped its exhaust into two huge holding tanks on its side called condensing engines these engines made possible the world's first underground railway unfortunately the solution wasn't perfect the holding tanks quickly filled up with fumes and needed to be emptied so how could the tanks be vented in an enclosed underground environment [Applause] this is number 23 and 24 leinster gardens in london's paddington district to the casual observer these houses are like any other on the street but on closer observation it becomes apparent that the windows are false and there are no mailboxes it is only from above that one can see the real purpose of these fake houses they cleverly hide the subway's vent holes where the engine's holding tanks could be cleared safely when the metropolitan opened it was successful immediately large numbers used it right from the beginning and it was successful commercially it was paying a dividend within one or two years which was considered very good four or five percent the first london subway called the metropolitan ran for three and a half miles between paddington and farringdon in the city but the cut and cover method turned out to be enormously disruptive it required digging up main streets to build the tunnels in the end this approach only added to the congestion of london streets rather than relieving them if the subway was going to expand a new method of construction one less disruptive needed to be found clearly there was only one option dig deeper [Music] today for the engineers handling the jubilee line project digging deep underground is a well-mastered science what continues to be a challenge however is digging through the waterlogged soil under london's river thames watery soil is much heavier and more likely to collapse than normal soil in all the jubilee line will tunnel back and forth beneath the thames four times the man who first devised the technique was a british engineer mark isambard brunell was a celebrated engineer he built the first major canal in america the lake champlain hudson waterway in 1825 he started work on a tunnel for pedestrians under the tens in undertaking this project brunel had to solve difficulties that had no easy answers brunel was very worried that he was going through soft mud at the bottom of the thames and there was a distinct possibility that the whole thing would fall through on him so he devised this huge shield whereas nowadays they're usually circular in section this one was rectangular because it was easy to build but a vast cast iron structure with screw jacks to hold timber boards at the front in order that the men could advance in a very small amount of time and feel fairly safe the machine that brunel devised is the forefather of all modern tunneling machines his innovation was to design a solid roof or shelf over the heads of workers to protect them as they clawed their way through the earth but his design was not without faults during the construction of his pedestrian tunnels there were two collapses and 10 people drowned but after 15 years the 500-yard long tunnel was completed in 1880 plans were made for a new pedestrian tunnel beneath the thames the engineer james henry greathead decided to improve on brunel's design his tunneling machine was smaller and lighter than burnell's and most importantly it was circular in shape giving it optimum strength for tunnels great head also designed the machine so that as the earth was removed hydraulic rams pushed it forward workers behind the machine would then bolt cast iron lining sections into place securing the tunnel finally cement would be pumped into the area between the iron lining and the surrounding earth ensuring a tight and waterproof fit it was a painstaking process resulting in only five feet of tunnel every 12 hours 10 feet a day greathead's new tunneling machine presented the metropolitan with a technology that would allow the subway for the first time to be dug deep beneath the city construction could go on without disrupting traffic above in 1886 greathead with his new digging machines set to work constructing an additional four miles of tunnels linking king williams street with stockwell um it's important to remember that the vast bulk of london's tube network was actually built by hand it was tunneled by hand and dug by hand it's a remarkable enterprise in many respects and we owe it largely to those people who beavered away underground at the turn of the century but now with deeper tunnels london subway had a major new problem to overcome steam engines were useless in tunnels 60 feet underground there was nowhere to vent their deadly toxic fumes but the germans had been experimenting with a revolutionary means of locomotion electricity electric engines proved to be the answer to this day london's tube trains are powered by electricity with a design changing little over 100 years each line has four rails two for wheels and two live rails that carry 630 volts of electricity the current is picked up from the live rails by shoes on the train powering the electric motors [Music] the first electric engines were used in the subway in 1890 they were british built and pulled three cars for the early passengers who considered gaslights in the street exotic the subway was a fantastical voyage into the future to the victorians and edwardians it must have been truly astonishing you step out into this white tiled tunnel and this train appears as if by magic there's no steam there's no smoke and it must have been just overwhelming for those early travelers in many respects it's it's almost akin to doing the shopping by space shuttle for us but the engineers made one bad judgment it was felt that because you were in a tunnel the entire time there was actually no need to see out of the train so they were built with no real windows with very very high back seats and they very quickly gained the nickname of padded cells the victorian engineers had solved the major early problems plaguing the subway by developing deep tunneling techniques and electric locomotion the stage was set for the subway to expand but there was still a problem where was all the money going to come from to electrify the lines and dig the new tunnels the money to modernize and expand the london subway would come from this man charles tyson yerkes a financier from chicago who had made his fortune on tram cars he was to become the driving force behind the great expansion of london subways at the turn of the century here was this go-getting thrusting american setting sort of edwardian england on its heels to be quite honest you know this was the man who was going to build the underground and build it he did your keys bought up the various competing lines and then set about electrifying them now all he needed was a large source of electrical power his solution was big bold and expensive build the world's largest power station locals called it the chelsea monster the size of lots road was a major increase on anything which had been done before that when it opened in 1905 it was described as the largest power station in the world and was at least twice as large as that at niagara which of course is a hydroelectric station to increase the plant's efficiency yerkes engineers turned to a new technology for generating electricity steam turbines this was another example of being far-sighted in that of course he was foreseeing the construction of further tube railways which would add load to the system his engineer from america chapman designed and built the whole affair this new technology has stood the test of time the chelsea monster powered the london subways for almost a century at peak times it produced over 180 megawatts of electricity enough to light a small city by the millennium this historic building will close and the national electricity network will power the tube with the subway tunnels now up to 100 feet below street level it became inconvenient to move large numbers of passengers up and down from the street by endless flights of stairs yerkes first solution was to use elevators but they were soon overwhelmed another approach was needed that solution proved to be an american invention the escalator today there are more than 300 escalators in the london subways and another 118 are being installed for the jubilee line extension the subways escalators have their work cut out covering in their lifetime the equivalent of 52 000 miles and running 20 hours a day 364 days of the year [Music] the first escalator was installed in 1911. these so-called moving stairs were not immediately popular so the company went out and hired a man with a wooden leg his job was to ride up and down the escalator all day to reassure the passengers of its safety [Music] the american influence on london's underground went further than financing and technical solutions yerkes and his company left many legacies phrases like move down inside the car only in the london underground is a train carriage called a car other americanism seeped in too northbound and southbound instead of the traditional up and down and even okay i think we've got a lot to thank your keys for it's interesting to note that um after the yerkes group of companies you know stopped digging um there wasn't another tube line in central london for for the best part of 50 nearly 60 years [Music] the cost of building and powering deep level subways was enormous 28 million dollars a mile in today's money to justify such an investment the london subway needed more revenue the solution was to expand the network out from central london into the suburbs and once the trains were in place the new riders built their houses near the stations at the same time the subway tried to entice travelers to come back into the city posters tempted people out of the suburbs to venture into london's west end at night without television of course people tended to go out to entertain themselves so the underground really pushed the idea of traveling into exciting electrically lit central london to go and see the latest film and that publicity was very much geared towards that i mean certainly given the fact that there were very few private cars at the time the vast volcker people who came into central london for an evening's entertainment normally traveled by two it's an enormously important market to us traveling by tube then was as much part of the evening out as seeing the film or seeing the play [Music] but soon enough londoners were to get a very different nightlife the second world war hit london hard and the subway would play a major and new role between august 1940 and july 1941 german planes dropped over 40 000 high explosives and millions of incendiary devices on london it was known as the blitz by the end 32 000 men women and children lay dead and 30 of the city was in ruins there were few bomb shelters in the early days of world war ii so in desperation londoners turned to the tubes because of their hundred foot depth they offered shelter from the inferno above ironically at the beginning of the blitz british authorities tried to keep the people out maintaining it prevented the system from running efficiently londoners simply ignored the ban and just bought tickets camping out on platforms in passageways and even on the escalators for 78 year old joyce morell time has not faded her memories of those long nights in the tunnels mothers and children used to wait in a queue to be let down at four o'clock they wouldn't let you go down before and they would stop there all night um people were just sitting on the concrete platforms which was very uncomfortable the thing i couldn't remember most is babies screaming all night long parents going to sleep and leaving the babies screaming accepting reality the subway authorities came up with ways to serve its new overnight visitors better some trains were converted to tube refreshment specials providing hot chocolate and buns for everyone london had gone underground [Music] i think that was the one thing we did feel safe well we all try to help one another perhaps looking after the children or trying to soothe them down trying to help the people who were feeling very panic stricken one didn't really have time to think of oneself but of course the following morning we didn't know whether we were going to find our houses still standing or not the tube took another wartime roll some of the tunnels were converted into factories one housed two thousand workers who built aircraft parts for the royal air force's spitfires hurricanes and bombers another became an improvised art gallery protecting the precious treasures of the british museum from the nazi bombs unfortunately the underground was never meant to be a bomb shelter in fact it had two strategic weak points the river and the station entrances a bomb exploding in the river thames could rupture a tunnel going under the thames and flood the entire system to prevent this engineers installed huge floodgates on either end of tunnels running under the river if ruptured the gates would close automatically but little could be done to protect the many vulnerable station entrances in 1941 a bomb bounced down into bank station exploding on the escalator tragically 56 londoners lost their lives in the ensuing explosion when the blitz ended londoners joyously returned to the open air but worse was to follow in 1944 hitler began a new campaign of terror launching his v1 and v2 rockets on the city forcing londoners back underground this time they had more choices winston churchill the prime minister had additional deep level tunnels built with the idea that after the war they would be used as subways [Music] in all eight tunnels were built and many survived to this day although they were never integrated into the system one tunnel is still used for government document storage and some of the original bunk beds are still there the graffiti on the ceiling reveal the tunnel's former military purpose another became the headquarters for general eisenhower in this tunnel ike and the allied command devised the plans for operation overlord otherwise known as d-day with ve day in 1945 the london subway could return to its former civilian purpose during the six years of war this victorian superstructure had played an unlikely but crucial role saving thousands of lives from nazi bombs but the future would present the london subway with new and even deadlier types of threats in 1995 a terrorist attack on the tokyo subway brought home how vulnerable subways are japanese extremists released a poisonous gas that killed 12 and injured 5 000 riders [Music] since 1990 the london subway has received over 10 000 terrorist alerts an average of three a day the confined crowded stations are a perfect target in the closed space of a subway there is no escape from the blast and destructive power of a well-placed bomb for those responsible for the tube security that threat demands constant vigilance we have to deal with people who are determined in their goals to achieve major disruption and sometimes loss of life in in the united kingdom but particularly in london and the underground as a target is one which they have favored in the past until recently the prime terrorist concern was the ira the irish republican army since 1972 the ira has waged a sustained war of terror on britain in its struggle to win a united ireland some 600 bomb attacks on the mainland have killed more than 60 people to fight the terrorists london subway police force has gone high-tech since 1987 millions of dollars have been spent on video surveillance equipment the subways communications and surveillance center is a state-of-the-art facility it provides authorities with instant access to nearly 1500 video cameras the cameras closely monitor all the comings and goings of the subway stations if you enter the system anywhere on the underground we would be able to collect you on on the network system and pick it up in here watch it on the television camera and follow you through on the trains so if you boarded a train going eastbound you'd have to get off the train going eastbound at the next station we can pick you up and follow you across the whole system it's probably the prime tool that keeps the police policing costs at a sensible level if we didn't have the cameras we'd have to replace them with people and people are a very expensive resource an added benefit of the cameras is a reduction in subway crime by providing police with 24-hour monitoring the london subways are now an unfriendly place for criminals in fact crime has fallen by 40 since the cameras went up as a result london is one of the safest metro systems in the world but things can still go wrong and when they do london's elite underground emergency response unit is trained to respond quickly the unit can deal with any kind of catastrophe from derailments to fires to bombings today they are conducting a training exercise for riding a derailed train right two inches inside outside inside inside smaller no we're all right we're right if we take this we take this on this piece the unit is well aware that their services have been needed in the past in february 1975 a runaway train careened into the buffers at moorgate station the cars were sandwiched into a tiny space one literally on top of the other in all forty two people lost their lives and another one hundred fifty were seriously injured the cause was never determined it's thought the driver might have had a heart attack but it took the rescuers a week to reach his mangled body and no one could ever be sure twelve years later tragedy struck yet again at 7 30 p.m on a brisk november evening a terrible all-consuming fire broke out at king's cross station one of the system's busiest the underground emergency response unit was called into action this was no training exercise before it was over and the inferno brought under control 31 people would be dead all the result of a cigarette that had been innocently dropped on the station's old wooden escalator as the fire spread passengers crowded onto the narrow platforms blinded by dense smoke and overcome by the intense heat chaos it seemed as we pulled up you would have believed that you was looking at a film shoot there was cars there was trucks there was blue lights it just seemed like this is a film set so you was waiting for the word cut and it just never came [Music] i was totally shocked when i went downstairs it was very dark and there was nothing left it was just i recall this very you know as if it was just yesterday there was just strips of metal of the ticket hall which you know in the heart and bustle of commuters you'd have to sort of dodge to one side to get through [Applause] incredibly the tube itself contributed to the intensity of the blaze trains which continued to run pushed oxygen into the station fueling the inferno the aftermath was shocking it was like i was standing in a field there was just nothing left the fire was out but it was just very hot there was the smell of burning in there and it wasn't just of the wooden particles and materials in the place it was of human beings [Music] the king's cross fire resulted in massive safety changes to the london subway the wooden escalators were replaced fire retardant materials were used in new station construction and training and evacuation procedures greatly improved for maintenance workers the fire brought home the sad fact that the main enemy of the underground is its age much of the london subway is over a hundred years old as a result the system is increasingly dilapidated and in dire need of a massive overhaul yet there is little time for upkeep because the system runs 20 hours a day seven days a week repairs can only be carried out during the four hours after the subway shuts down at one am by 5 am all the work must be completed so the subway is ready for the next day's service the loneliest overnight maintenance job is track walking every single inch of the underground network is carefully inspected on a regular basis for charlie d'alia that means a five-mile constitutional through the tunnels each and every night to check the track [Music] where this one is a maintenance army of 1500 men and women work against the clock to keep the london underground running but as the system gets older the repairs get more difficult london underground's problems today come from its age it was built in late victorian edwardian period it used old materials it was not built to a very high standard today we spend most of our time rebuilding it with modern materials to modern standards we're about halfway through that challenge it's estimated that 16 billion dollars is needed to bring the underground up to date it costs 400 million dollars a year merely to repair and renew the current system the only technology that has stood the test of time are the iron tunnel linings so when the engineers got a chance to build a new line for the subway they were determined to get it right the design of the jubilee line extension is aimed at ensuring that tragedies like the fire at king's cross or the accident at moorgate never happen again engineers are using the latest and most sophisticated technology to build the jubilees tunnels trains and stations [Music] the thing that bedevils the underground is that it may have been built with vision it wasn't built with foresight all the holes are too small when you get to the jubilee line extension all the holes are the right size it's also having to tackle one problem that until now subway engineers have mostly managed to avoid the complex and challenging geology of london itself london is split in two by the river thames the bulk of the tube system was dug north of the river for one simple reason the thick layer of clay on that side of the thames is ideal to tunnel through south of the thames the clay is much thinner just beneath the fine clay strata is a porridge of water-bearing soils and gravels engineers say that tunneling through these soils is like digging through a water-logged beach the biggest hazard i suppose for life and limb in constructing tunnels is water we're always very anxious to keep away from water it's why we didn't build tunnels in the gravel south of the thames there are ways of course of building tunnels in water bearing ground and traditionally the principal aid was compressed air this technique for working in waterlogged soil was first pioneered by james henry greathead when he built the subway tunnels in the late 19th century high pressure air is pumped into a sealed chamber at the tunnel's face the air pressure keeps water away from the digging surface allowing engineers to tunnel more safely but working in this pressurized environment can be risky the high pressure necessary to hold water back is equivalent to being 40 feet below sea level if workers emerge from the airlock without going into a decompression chamber they face the bends and possible death but the jubilee line is using a new kind of tunneling machine that pressurizes only the very front of the machine where the cutting blades are leaving the actual workers to do their job in a normal pressurized environment by carefully regulating the rate at which the earth is removed during the drilling process engineers can maintain the proper air pressure at the front of the tunneling machine keeping the water at bay the jubilee tunneling machines and all modern tunneling moles are direct descendants of the early british tunneling machines of the 19th century but these new machines operate on a much more massive scale in the past it would have taken dozens of men to do the work of these mechanical molds with their enormous cutting blades [Music] [Music] the monsters advance slowly but relentlessly through the london clay for each meter of tunnel dog 40 tons of earth is carried away on conveyors as the machine moves forward engineers put in place pre-formed concrete tunnel sections cement has replaced iron because it's cheaper [Music] from time to time these monsters bump up against london's past at london bridge tunnelers found the debris from a roman house smothered by the unforgiving mud [Music] [Music] at the new train depot at stratford a burial ground for cistercian monks was discovered this was the site of a monastery built in 1134 and destroyed by henry viii in 1538 all told archaeologists removed 678 skeletons for a respectful reburial before work started up again [Music] the most radical and innovative aspect of the new jubilee extension are its stations for years london's subway platforms have been cramped dirty overcrowded and vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attack remembering the fire disaster at king's cross the jubilee line's new stations are designed to serve passengers safely for the next century we wanted to make stations that were convenient and that also lifted the spirit that they were practical common sense and optimistic that made people feel better the concept of the jubilee convenience is ease of use and a bit as an extra bit of delight the new stations are enormous the canary wharf station for instance is larger than the massive skyscraper which overshadows it they're designed with safety in mind platform edge doors line each platform greatly reducing the wind effect that fed the flames at king's cross and the doors also reduce access to the tracks this will cut down on suicide attempts twice a week someone falls or throws themselves onto the underground's tracks the jubilee line will also have state-of-the-art trains and cars 59 automatic trains of six cars each they will run every two and a half minutes moving fifty thousand passengers an hour the trains are designed with crumple zones to absorb impact addressing the problem that killed so many people in the moorgate crash each train will also have black box incident recorders similar to those on airplanes the escalators go through their final testing and work on the various jubilee stations is nearing completion but success has come at a price both in terms of time and budget the jubilee line is substantially over budget and way over schedule yet technically the engineers have achieved their objectives building the most advanced subway system in the world the men and women who built this massive superstructure look back on their accomplishments with great pride i think we're absolutely on on the leading edge when it comes to tunneling i think other cities would have accepted the earth moving more would have accepted the surface damage and would have simply shrugged it off and gone back and repair the damage in such an intensely crowded city as we have in london that took the very best quality civil engineering to achieve [Music] the demand for technically advanced subways like the jubilee line grows in direct proportion to the increasing congestion in urban areas all around the globe cities are developing new mass transit technologies to move people in paris the french have recently built their new meteor subway line with fully automatic trains in asia mass transit is making great strides forward hong kong opened its own subway system just 20 years ago but already it carries 850 million passengers a year [Music] now britain's engineers too are trying to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors they will need all their ingenuity and skill to turn the legacies of the past into the subways of the future on the drawing board is a new type of subway train for london the space train it will increase passenger capacity by over 40 percent without changing the size of london's narrow tunnels the space train is pioneering the concept of micro wheels which allows for a much larger cabin for the passengers the space train also has no split cars it's all one long tube [Music] [Music] the london underground has served its city well providing efficient safe transport in times of peace and protection in times of war over the last 150 years a hundred miles of tunnels have been hacked through hostile soils while carefully preserving the ancient and historic city above [Music] today thanks to the technologically advanced jubilee line the train in the drain continues to be the world's leader in mass transportation keeping its proud place as a superstructure like no other [Applause] [Music] [Music] rising from beneath the waves a silent predator suddenly strikes for almost a century submarines have patrolled the world's oceans [Applause] their missions even their construction cloaked in secrecy now we'll take you where cameras have never been allowed before to witness the incredible birth of a modern nuclear submarine about to embark on a potentially dangerous mission this is the story of the most complex military machine of the 20th century a superstructure called seawolf [Music] [Music] it's a ritual like no other a centuries-old tradition of pomp and pageantry welcoming a new ship to the fleet but while the christening of this vessel follows a time-honored custom that's where tradition ends this is a ship for the next century an entirely new class of submarine meeting the water for the first time 188 atf 400 a showpiece of revolutionary design and construction techniques the nuclear-powered uss seawolf takes its place in the ocean as the most advanced and lethal submarine ever created it's taken over 3 000 workers more than a decade to build what the navy calls the most complicated machine on earth [Applause] [Music] the crew of sea wolf has endured years of training to earn a place aboard this mechanical marvel she is a prototype for the navy's undersea future but before they can claim the title of sovereign of the ocean man and machine must pass a complex and dangerous series of tests known as the sea trials [Music] sierra 3-2 a submerged contact my intentions are to engage those contacts stay course 1-2-0 the stakes could not be higher in the post-cold war era budget cutbacks the navy is relying on sea wolf to prove it can do more with less if this ship fails her sea trials the entire future of the navy submarine program will be affected the 14 officers and 124 enlisted men of seawolf are well aware that they and the submarine's builder are under intense scrutiny shoot on generated bearing the number of sea wolves approved for construction has already been slashed from 30 to 3. workers at the electric boat company who built sea wolf have seen their numbers drop from 25 000 to 7 000 to them a successful sea trial could mean the difference between economic life and death farewell city course zero five zero stand down from battle stations but as the world's most sophisticated weapon slowly descends beneath the waves the ultimate test will come from the ocean itself at bone-crushing pressures deep below the surface there's no margin for error there are few places in the world large enough and sophisticated enough to build a nuclear submarine this is one of them the electric boat company's machine shop in kwanset point rhode island for the first time ever the company has allowed cameras inside to witness the birth of a nuclear submarine here giant pipes are twisted into intricate shapes while massive grinding machines polish tons of special metal alloys into parts that will become the body of sea wolf there's about eight million parts on a submarine those parts have to fit together electronically mechanically the tolerances are extraordinarily close the electric boat company was co-founded by submarine pioneer john holland in 1899 while the construction of seawolf marks a new chapter in the history of underwater vehicles like all subs its life began on the design table from the 19th century through the cold war submarine construction has always required enormous amounts of precise planning for instance on trident there were ten thousand drawings that defined that ship there were probably five or six revisions in the ten thousand drawings so it's sixty thousand pieces of paper it's been about thirty years we've designed a new class of submarines in those days we designed a submarine you just used to use slide rules there was a lot of hand calculations and so when they designed sea wolf it was computer-aided it was the first time we did that when seawolf was designed in the 1980s the computer revolution was just beginning with the advent of computer assisted design or cad technology her creators could drastically reduce the staggering amount of hand calculations required now basic design measurements such as length and diameter could be visualized in ways the early pioneers couldn't imagine but the design process was still full of challenges [Music] the three main problems facing modern navy designers today were also faced by their forefathers first how to create a vehicle that could stay underwater for extended periods of time then how to install enough weaponry to make it a viable threat finally how to remain undetected in the past submarines were constructed by welding together steel plates to form the hull then the machinery or guts of the sub would be lowered inside through openings in the top this was the primary method of submarine construction from world war one through the cold war the cold war was one of the most volatile and dangerous times in american history as the arms race between the united states and the soviet union escalated the government turned to its undersea force for defense the navy developed two kinds of submarine classes the ballistic missile submarine and a smaller class of subs the attack class the ballistic subs often called boomers because of their enormous firepower were essentially large mobile platforms for launching nuclear weapons deployed on secret missions throughout the world's oceans the ballistic missile submarines served as a threatening deterrent to an enemy first strike their companion class the attack subs were smaller and faster than the boomers these subs were designed to do exactly what their name implied attack quickly silently and with deadly force shoot following the cold war the threat of a superpower conflict decreased while the likelihood of smaller regional conflicts increased in response a new kind of submarine was needed a submarine like sea wolf the gulf war with saddam hussein actually started the attack started with a couple of missiles out of a submarine hundreds of miles away it keeps your personnel safe and has the ability to be used in every conceivable situation for this new class of submarine a new building approach was employed the navy created seawolf using a modular construction method for the first time a submarine would be built as a series of modules with the piping machinery and fittings installed at the same time this hull cylinder about 40 feet in diameter is about to become part of a larger complete module using this new method of construction the hull will not only be much stronger but maintenance on the sub will also be easier in the past engineers would have to cut holes in the pressure hull to add or remove machinery this time-consuming labor-intensive process required extensive recertification tests now machinery can fit through special openings that are covered by a watertight hatch increasing the efficiency of the construction process and the strength of the hull [Music] even a pencil sized puncture in the ship's hull would bring in water with the velocity of a bullet fired from a rifle to learn how to survive against such impossible odds the crew must now face their own certification process that training begins here at the naval submarine school in groton connecticut these trainee submariners know that someday they may face a situation of life and death an emergency in which their response will either save the ship or send it to the bottom of the scene [Music] during world war ii submarine crews in the pacific faced impossible odds with terrifying regularity under constant attack from japanese depth charges submarines became the final resting place for thousands of american servicemen coming on fire despite the losses american submarines inflicted major damage on the japanese navy and merchant fleet one after the other these steel sharks rolled out of shipyards as fast as they could be built in response the japanese tried every possible method to turn back the u.s sub fleet including propaganda we know very well that american submarines have headed west from pearl harbor if american submariners are wise you will turn back certain death awaits you over here but neither depth charges nor propaganda could silence these warriors of the deep and the american submarine fleet dramatically affected the war's outcome [Applause] the submarine force represented just a mere two percent of a very very large navy the submarine force with that two percent of the navy sank just about 55 of all the japanese shipping that was sunk in the entire pacific war ultimately the end of world war ii was brought on by a catastrophic new weapon an apocalyptic device using an energy source of unimaginable power after the war's end one man began experimenting with a way to safely harness this awesome power under the sea he envisioned a new kind of submarine powered by an energy source that would give it incomparable speed and stealth his vision would lead to the awesome creation called sea wolf [Music] somewhere off the atlantic coast the world's most advanced submarine has begun its most crucial tests called the alpha trial this is the first of three sea trials which will determine whether uss seawolf is ready to join the fleet officer deck make your depth seven five zero feet twenty five down made by dev seven five zero feet two five degree down angle eye sir as it cuts silently through the water its nuclear reactor provides an almost limitless supply of energy four pounds of enriched uranium will provide the same amount of energy as 10 million gallons of fuel oil used by early diesel-powered subs the advent of nuclear power was the most important development in the history of submarine construction and now as the most sophisticated submarine ever built continues its top secret mission it does so because of the dream of one man navy admiral hyman a qualified submariner an engineer with a strong faith in both the practicality and necessity of atomic propulsion he was a visionary of this business before we had the word vision his convictions and determination soon made him a dedicated and efficient spokesman for a nuclear navy admiral rickover was the first person to realize that nuclear power could turn the submarine into the most feared weapon on the planet with this new power source rickover reasoned he could counteract the submarine's achilles heel the need for frequent resurfacing which made them vulnerable to attack with no precedent and no technology available for such an undertaking he had to start from scratch prior to nuclear propulsion particularly during world war ii submarines were essentially surface ships that were capable of submerging once in a while but with nuclear propulsion now you had a ship that was truly submersible but translating nuclear fuel into a practical energy source presented rickover with a paradox on one hand harnessing the power of the atom on a submarine would be extraordinarily complex but once accomplished using that power to propel the sub would be relatively simple utilizing the same principle as a steamboat the process begins with a nuclear reaction as control rods carefully reveal uranium in a sealed container extraordinary heat is produced liquid is then pumped through the system it carries that heat away from the reactor core and circulates cooler temperatures back to the nuclear fuel the liquid then flows through a heat exchanger where the high temperatures are transferred to water coursing through thick pipes this assures there can be no release of radioactive materials during the energy exchange process this tremendous heat turns water into saturated steam the steam powers a turbine which drives a generator supplying all the electrical energy needed to operate the ship excess power is diverted to energy reserves stored in massive banks of batteries on board admiral rickover understood that nuclear engines could not only generate more power they could give submarines virtually unlimited range underway on nuclear power that was the turks message that sent the nautilus and her crew into service in 1955 rickover's theory was put to the test as uss nautilus became the world's first nuclear-powered submarine although the nautilus speed is a secret it is known to be by far the fastest submarine in the world three years later nautilus proved the submarine was now master of all the oceans even those that were largely unexplored in her historic four-day journey nautilus opened a new frontier when it crossed from the pacific to the atlantic under the ice of the arctic ocean passing directly under the ice packs of the north pole nautilus completed the first undersea transit of this hostile environment harbor greeting has given the record breaker the ship returned to a hero's welcome a tribute to exploits that mark a new age in man's progress a great step forward in the mastering of the seven seas well done very well done later in that same month the crew of a different atomic submarine would establish a new endurance record for underwater operation for 60 days between august 7th and october 6 1958 the crew of this ship remained submerged beneath the forbidding ice floes of the north pole the name of that ship was ussc wolf predecessor to today's nuclear-powered wonder level [Music] [Music] submerging for 60 days is simply routine with its nuclear-powered engines and ability to manufacture oxygen and water sea wolf could theoretically remain underwater for years at a time but beyond her extended range nuclear power has also given sea wolf another important edge speed while her top speed is a closely guarded navy secret officials admit she cruises faster than 25 knots about 30 miles per hour experts privately acknowledge seawolf can actually travel much faster well it's funny people try to to figure out how fast the ship goes they always ask the crew and the crew will say they have an acronym and they say it goes so fantastically fast that stuff falls off you know that's that's their little joke but they won't tell you for sure how fast it goes it is certainly uh it is certainly a sports car compared to the other ones hell the left hand degrees rudder city course zero eight zero in fact even the designers of this undersea sports car were surprised by how fast she really is the ship is tremendously faster what they expect and people don't believe it you go back to some of the scientists who did the original calculations they refused to believe it for all its high-tech power sea wolf is still a warship and life aboard this ship is no pleasure crews every square inch of sea wolf is designed for maximum efficiency which doesn't leave much room for human comforts the crew eats and shifts over 130 men will pass through this compact galley three times each day space and privacy aboard sea wolf are luxuries the crew learn to live without even their sleeping quarters are designed for efficiency the reason why you call it hot racking or hot bunking is you have three guys to two racks the reason why you have that is because you don't have enough space available for each member of the crew the reason why they call it hot racking is because while you always have one unwatched you have two in the rack when that person gets off watch that rack is still warm from the other person so that's pretty much why they call it plus you jump around from rack to rack you'll never sleep in the same rack twice it's not uncommon for some sailors to actually sleep in the torpedo cradles luxurious accommodations for taller men frustrated by confined bunks because space aboard a submarine is at a premium maximizing every available inch has always started with the design phase during the 1980s sea wolf designers were able to use emerging technologies to increase available space for example cd-rom technology meant thousands of technical manuals and drawings required on early subs could be replaced by compact discs no minor achievement this freed up 350 cubic feet of space and eliminated over six tons of paper on board a major tactical advantage of sea wolf is her arsenal of computers this massive network of incredibly powerful machines are the most ever used on any naval vessel her communication software alone uses 6 million lines of programming code seawolf submarine is probably the most complex product built by man in the world today if you took the floppy disks 1.4 megabit uh floppy disks and took the data that's in the submarine and and stored them in those floppy disks they would be taller than the world trade center there's just an enormous complexity of material science machines computers detection bearing 273 classified biologics the computer driven sensor systems on sea wolf are so advanced they can even pick up the most minute natural sounds of the deep what you're hearing is shrimp feeding in the cold waters of the atlantic the crew listens as dolphins swarm in for lunch but beyond just hearing faint natural sounds sea wolf sensors can detect and identify even the most silent of ships by their sound signatures today's acoustic sensors both on the submarine and also towed behind the submarine have allowed us to be able to detect very quiet submarines and surface ships out to thousands and thousands of yards in range out to many many nautical miles those sensors combined with very improved and highly capable heavyweight torpedoes give us the capability to attack both submarines and surface ships almost at will crew members say the difference between sea wolf and non-nuclear submarines is like comparing a biplane to a jet but for all its space-age capabilities the job of traveling beneath the sea remains extremely dangerous and no mission is more dangerous than the alpha trial the submarine's first meeting with the sea as the crew of uss seawolf continues their shakedown voyage a mission from decades earlier casts an ominous shadow a mission in which another nuclear submarine was being tested a mission that would be cut short by tragedy a tragedy that would shock a nation and forever change the nature of submarine construction the navy's newest nuclear submarine the thresher is launched at portsmouth naval shipyard when uss thresher was launched in july 1960 she was the first of her kind a new class of submarine like the crew of sea wolf thresher faced a regular series of tests designed to further submarine exploration but on april 10 1963 the incredible danger associated with any undersea journey became all too clear [Music] at 7 47 p.m about 200 miles east of boston thresher began a deep descent known as a test dive for reasons still unknown at 9 13 pm the ship radioed a message that it was experiencing minor difficulties and was attempting to blow its ballast tanks a procedure used to surface during an emergency four minutes later a garbled message was received then the horrifying sound of the ship breaking up uss thresher along with her crew of 129 men was gone it was a chilling a chilling and memorable day it was almost like where you were when the president was assassinated so this was also that year as ships and deep diving equipment scoured the ocean for the wreckage investigators began a decades-long quest to find out why she sang in a remarkable series of pictures the navy photographs the ill-starred sub in one photo her number shows clearly the tail section with the stern planes is plainly visible here navy submersibles found what was left of thresher in june of 1963 at a depth of over 8 000 feet a navy court of inquiry however was never able to fully determine the exact cause of her demise no navy official was more devastated by the loss of thresher than the father of nuclear submarines admiral rickover while some critics attacked the performance of the ship's nuclear reactor rickover believed that submarine construction itself must change he lobbied for improved fabrication techniques better inspection methods and more attention to emerging technologies and new ways of thinking when we lost the thresher we went from what had been a proactive approach to building submarines to a very strong reactive approach and it focused our uh engineering discipline into what do we have to do to make a submarine safe for the people in the harsh environment not just in war time but in peace time too and so thresher is not only historical memory we remind people of thresher as part of our submarine education and training we go around and remind them the consequences of not adhering rigorously to these technical specifications and the processes so it's still the backdrop for the subsafe program you know here it is 34 years later [Music] the design and construction of submarines are highly specialized crafts constantly being revised to accommodate new technologies [Music] as technologies develop the workers who build subs must also adapt continually undergoing rigid certification tests which measure their skill and expertise even the body of sea wolf is made from a new material the hulls of early subs were made from a high-strength steel called hy80 this material could withstand pressure of 80 000 pounds per square inch [Music] the sea wolf class submarines are created using a new super steel called hy 100 able to withstand 100 000 pounds of pressure per square inch this means the designers can now create submarines which can dive deeper than their predecessors of the same weight although just how deep is classified or they can create new lighter weight subs capable of reaching the same depths as the earlier heavier subs but regardless of its weight a submarine's effectiveness has always been judged by its ability to remain undetected once at sea an engine hum a mechanical noise even a crew member's conversation could reveal the ship's location with deadly consequences stealth is the most important thing a submarine maintains its capability and its safety by never being detected for example if there's a conflict a hot conflict somewhere in the world submarines especially the us submarine is usually the first war fighting or peacekeeping platform on the scene and it does that without being detected it can then provide information with surveillance feed that information back to the president and so that the decisions can be made and submarine has the capability of doing that quietly quickly and it's virtually undetectable two things you know they know we have them and we can be there fast and to even when they don't know we're there they're not sure we're not there because these things are stealth so they could be thinking that well maybe around the corner there's an american suburb maybe it's just off a little bit and that will prevent countries i think from doing foolish things and after all that's much preferable to actually going to war to maintain stealth every joint and substructure within the ship is designed to minimize sound and vibration even operating at top speed seawolf will be quieter than the older submarines were when idling at the pier it's quieter than any other submarine in the world and that required an enormous amount of technology in quieting things like switches and valves and hydraulic piping the ship's inner decks are not attached directly to the hull but rest on rubber mountings to reduce vibrations other sophisticated anti-detection strategies are also integrated into the construction process propellers are designed to produce minimal noise anti-detection tiles made from sound absorbing plastic compounds line the inside of the hull and finally an additional layer of sound absorbing material is applied to the hull's exterior when finished while the ship is cloaked by a silent defense its stealth-like capabilities also create a formidable offensive weapon whether gathering covert electronic intelligence monitoring an enemy's shipping lanes or detecting and deploying mines sea wolf will be able to get in and out of dangerous waters faster than any warship ever created but sometimes the most deadly threat to a submarine crew comes from inside the ship fire in the engine room i think probably the fire is the worst thing to have happen to you because you know that's something very quickly if you don't do the right thing you can get out of control as you see this is an enclosed environment this is all we have to say if you get a big fire going it gets very hot here in a hurry and very very hazardous and there's nowhere else to go trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface a fire could wipe out a crew in an instant or slowly consume the ship's life-giving oxygen supplies it is a terrifying scenario but one that is planned for in the design of a ship in its construction and at the naval submarine school carries out refresh watches set this training doesn't end once on board class bravo fire in the galley fire in the deep fat fryer there's heavy smoke in the galley on a submarine crew members constantly rehearse and plan for every conceivable situation there's heavy black smoke in the galley we are currently searching for hot spots with the music there are no hot spots out here when building a military craft like sea wolf designers must also plan for every eventuality the most obvious and most dangerous is combat [Music] like an aircraft carrier a submarine is divided into separate water tight sections this way if a torpedo should penetrate the hull or if a fire should start in one section the rest of the ship is still able to function make your depth seven five zero feet twenty five down seven five zero feet two five degree down angle i sure full dive on the steering if the crew of uss seawolf can pass its sea trials it will be judged ready for combat close about 2 000 yards and about four minutes will be at the firing point tomba hall chip going to pivot tray a level starboard side clear carrying an arsenal of lethal weapons that can be targeted with pinpoint accuracy the ship will patrol the seas with more military power than many countries possess weapons coordinator captain reports status of uh normal life a silent and deadly predator sea wolf will be the most advanced heavily armed attack submarine the world has ever seen all stations rival path is direct pass carry on [Music] as the pieces of a new nuclear submarine are forged at this historic shipyard workers at the electric boat company now face an imposing task transporting the giant sections to their dry dock facilities in groton connecticut to do this modules weighing over 700 tons each are placed on the largest transport truck in the world there are only two such vehicles in existence and both were specially made to assist in submarine construction when these two vehicles are used together workers can move modules weighing over 1400 tons now they will travel by barge for the 60 mile journey from this rhode island machine shop to the connecticut drydock facility as the pre-assembled pieces arrive at the dry dock they are suspended in order and then pieced together to form the complete ship many months of assembly have been condensed into seconds to see this amazing process in action as the pieces of this two billion dollar puzzle are carefully assembled even top-ranking navy officials are amazed by the complexity of the operation the design development and construction of a submarine i view it very much like eating an elephant how do you eat an elephant it's one bite at a time if the assembly of this submarine happens one bite at a time then these are its sharpest teeth the weapon systems now with its body almost complete the deadly arsenal is installed on board sea wolf four levels of robotically controlled storage racks can deploy a lethal force on a moment's notice [Music] its tomahawk cruise missiles can be placed with pinpoint accuracy guided by a global positioning satellite i guess we could talk about san diego to san francisco that's about 520 miles i would say that if this missile took off from jack murphy stadium you could put it right about between pitchers mound and second base down there in candlestick park sea wolf's anti-submarine missiles make her a fearsome underwater force as well she has stealth she has improved sensors and she has maneuverability everything that makes a fighter aircraft superior is what seawolf brings to that underwater dogfight sea wolf is the most sophisticated military craft ever created but the road leading up to this 20th century superstructure actually began hundreds of years ago it was a road paved with danger in 1775 only 25 miles from the site of the electric boat company a young irishman named david bushnell built this device called the turtle driven by his intense hatred of the british and with the support of george washington bushnell created an underwater craft that could place an explosive device on harbored british warships its name came from the design resembling two turtle shells seven feet long and four feet wide this craft of wood iron and leather could approach an enemy ship with a hand crank propeller and was able to stay submerged 20 feet below the surface for almost 30 minutes unfortunately when bushnell's device was tried on a british man of war the attaching screw could not penetrate the copper sheathing on the hull the turtle was lucky to escape but the theory of this unique weapon delivery system survived the underwater sneak attack was born during the civil war both sides developed submarines but it was a confederate version invented by horus l hundley that became the first sub to record a torpedo hit on an enemy ship it was a milestone that came with a terrible cost the 60-foot hl hundley used a crew of eight to turn its propeller crankshaft towing a single torpedo behind it in 1864 in the charleston south carolina harbor the hunley delivered its deadly cargo against the union's uss housatonic the attack did little damage to the union ship but the exploding torpedo sank the hundley as primitive as these early craft appear they actually used the same engineering principle as today's modern subs the ability to submerge and surface by adding or subtracting ballast i'm going at 750 feet use 25 degree down angleizer during her sea trials one of seawolf's most critical challenges will be her ability to perform deep dives inside the hull are ballast tanks designed to temporarily fill with water in the original sub designs the ballast tanks were located port and starboard as shown here when the tanks fill with water negative buoyancy is created causing the vessel to sink when compressed air flushes the water from the compartments buoyancy returns and the ship rises seawolf also employs this basic principle of physics but the ballast tanks on this ship are located fore and aft so the ship can submerge or surface with incredible speed how's your day 300 feet sir the propulsion of early subs required exhaustive manual labor performed in suffocating spaces with no fresh air these ships could only die for brief periods staying close to the surface in order to ventilate the craft board seawolf the same nuclear power that propels the ship also supplies the crew with life-giving oxygen water molecules are formed from two hydrogen atoms spinning around a single oxygen atom on sea wolf sophisticated machines use electromagnetic force to disengage the hydrogen atoms from the molecular structure leaving pure oxygen for the ship's life support system but it was another source of energy that first turned the submarine into a viable fighting machine john philip holland was an industrious irish immigrant who pioneered a double propulsion system for submarines holland's boat used a 50 horsepower gas engine for surface sailing and then to keep the air breathable a battery operated motor while submerged this dual engine approach to underwater navigation gave the sub greater range and submergence capability something that u.s navy officials realized in 1900 able to dive to just over 100 feet the irishman's craft became the first submarine commissioned by the navy the crew of uss holland became pioneers of a new world under the sea over the next 14 years 25 more of these amazing devices called submarines were built but beneath the waves the united states would not be alone for long may 1915 the ocean liner lusitania is fired upon and sunk by a german u-boat in under 20 minutes over 1100 passengers died many of them americans the u.s moves one step closer to war with germany during world war one the potential of this new machine would be put to the ultimate test the age-old ritual of enemies facing each other in head-to-head combat was replaced by the sneak attack gyro 0-005 increases the dream of john holland and the early submariners forever changed the nature of warfare i think certainly that holland when he designed and built his first craft probably never recognized where we would be today john holland might never have imagined a vessel like seawolf but to the navy it marks the beginning of an entirely new class of submarine high-tech subs that will begin in virtual reality and end up resembling science fiction but first seawolf must prove to the navy and the public that her design is sound that her crew is ready now as she nears the end of her crucial maiden voyage the future of the next generation of subs hangs in the balance her propulsion and life support systems have been tested she has performed rapid dives to classified depths under stressful warfare scenarios she has been deemed combat ready as the end of uss sea wolf's maiden voyage draws near captain dave mccall has witnessed what billions of dollars worth of machinery and a highly trained crew can really do while young in age mccall's crew are ready to become submariners it's 2.3 billion dollars for this ship and the first underway watch station an 18 year old stands or occupies is he's driving this ship he has his hands on the wheel of a 2.3 billion dollar sports car and that's a lot of responsibility you have to want that kind of responsibility you have to be ready to take it and uh and they choose themselves they have trained rehearsed and drilled now it's time to come home [Music] but as sea wolf ends her maiden voyage she is bringing back more than just the crew over 100 workers of the electric boat company have gone with her on this dangerous but crucial first journey while these shipbuilders were on board to perform tests and gauge the success of their handiwork they also wanted to send a message this was a ship that had been constructed properly and they would put their lives on the line to prove it they've literally worked 24 hours a day seven days a week for three years with very little time off [Music] years of hard work and grueling training have led to this one moment the return of uss seawolf to her base in groton connecticut to the trained observer the presence of a simple wooden broom attached to the ship's superstructure tells them everything they need to know the ship has performed a clean sweep of its first major test the mission is a success it's probably our finest ship in the water today it performs beyond expectations after seeing it start from the early stages of design early stage of construction where we just started bending steel to watch the crew bring it alive start operating it we've been through a lot of major obstacles that would have normally brought another project to his knees and stopped it against a backdrop of budget cuts and shifting political power structures the designers builders and crew of uss seawolf have achieved a stunning victory under a mandate to do more with less they have rewritten the book on how to build a submarine now the success of sea wolf will provide a blueprint for the submarine of the next century a vehicle known simply as the new attack submarine when production of these sleek new subs begins they will be able to do everything sea wolf can but costs less to build that's because advancements in computer technology just beginning when seawolf was constructed now provide designers with incredible new tools tools today give us collectively as a community the navy electric boat our suppliers the ability to go in fact integrate the very best design very early in the program this 3d generated sailor named ergomann is an example of this new space age technology virtual reality programs like these enable designers to see what these subs will be like for human inhabitants before construction even begins we've got to verify how how low can we drop the sun another significant change based on seawolf success is a brand new approach to the management of sub construction in video teleconferences like this the workers who will build the sub and the men who will travel in them interact with the designers and engineers at every phase of development jimmy if you just want to circle that so our friends down in washington see that that flange we're possibly talking about eliminating today we're not interested who comes up with a good idea we make it a team effort to go produce the very best design for this country that we can produce and that's exciting and that's different than it's been in the past seawolf and the new attack submarine are designed to evolve with technologies of the future soon even the venerable periscope itself a staple of submarines throughout history may be replaced by powerful liquid plasma display screens with the success of their first sea trial the crew of sea wolf will continue a long and distinguished tradition even though this is a new ship with a young crew they are traveling in the footsteps of those who have gone before many of whom did not return these are the names of united states submarines lost in the service of duty with all hands on board submariners say these ships and the men aboard them remain on eternal patrol [Music] we'll also be checking the tubes shooting no one is more aware of the dangers of the deep than the man who will ultimately certify the vessel as being ready to join the fleet good yes i am the person who signs for a submarine that it's ready to go to sea and it's sub safe and we do that through a very rigorous discipline process that literally takes thousands of hours of documentation test and retest had sea wolf failed on its first mission the consequences for the navy would have been disastrous thousands of jobs billions of dollars and the lives of the crew were at stake now for the thousands of men and women who created her sea wolf's successful first voyage is a time of great emotion you know the day i give up the ship is going to be kind of like the day i gave up my daughter to her husband at wedding it's gonna be it's gonna be a hard day [Music] the design and construction of a nuclear submarine requires the imagination and determination of thousands forged from silicon and steel they are born in giant factories but here beneath the waves is where they will spend most of their lives by the time sea wolf ends her final mission it's difficult to imagine how far man will have ventured into the realm of the deep ocean but waiting in the wings will be an entirely new class of undersea superstructures i hereby certify that he is qualified in submarines on board uss seawolf and a new generation of submariners piloting these guardians of the deep into the next century and beyond congratulations password [Applause] [Music] they seem to defy gravity forged from concrete and steel skyscrapers loom over today's urban jungle they embody the souls of those who built them the strength and courage of high steel workers but also the danger of such a passion for as gracefully as they rise skyscrapers collapse with unparalleled devastation yet in the face of potential disaster architects continue to design these superstructures higher and higher it's become a race towards the heavens to lay claim to the title tallest building in the world how far and how high will this never-ending race take us and what engineering marvels keep these super structures standing [Music] [Music] in nagoya japan despite continual rainstorms work progresses on one of the world's largest skyscrapers the jr central towers still in its infancy is being built in the middle of a crowded city and on top of a busy train station [Music] every facet of modern engineering skill is daily put to the test when completed this enormous skyscraper will encompass over four and a half million square feet [Music] about the size of the pentagon or larger than one tower of the world trade towers the twin towers and one of the largest buildings in japan if not the world engineers in nagoya like many throughout japan have no choice but to build up land is scarce and real estate prices are soaring to meet the needs of a growing population skyscrapers are the only answer in the capital of malaysia space isn't an issue land for construction abounds yet in kuala lumpur a modern 1400 foot skyscraper is being built the patronus towers are an amazing structure of glass and steel with 88 floors and 100 foot spires these twin towers are a monument to architect cesar pali's dreams whether built out of need or inspiration constructing these mammoth skyscrapers relies heavily upon technological advances [Music] but modern science isn't perfect and tragedy follows when one comes tumbling down [Applause] [Music] unwavering before such catastrophes engineers continue to build bigger and taller superstructures [Music] well i think man has always wanted to get higher and higher they always climb the mountain to see beyond it's also getting up to be taller to to overlook everyone else or to be recognized or to feel more powerful to build these modern day monoliths architects and engineers first had to conquer the force of gravity [Music] during the mid-1800s the only means of vertical transportation other than climbing stairs was a rope and pulley system driven by a steam engine however the system was too dangerous for passengers since the ropes often broke frustrated elisha otis invented a safety break that locks the platform to its guides in 1852 what seems a minor invention paves the way for the modern elevator [Music] slowly the public begins to trust the otis elevator upper level floors become fashionable and profitable as architects quickly adopt this new means of vertical transportation even with the use of an elevator buildings rising above 200 feet remain a dream the building materials of the day bricks stones and mortar are simply too heavy to allow great heights but in 1885 with the invention of the steel cage structure the modern skyscraper is born rather than build up from the ground they built a cage inside your bone structure your personal skeleton and then they put the skin on the outside and then the weight of that material is held at each floor level rather than pass all the way down 5 10 20 30 stories down to the ground and held at the bottom floor no it's all hung off of this very strong structural cage which is much lighter now because it's out of steel because the steel structure bears the majority of the weight the exterior or skin of the building can now be made of much lighter materials such as glass and aluminum the result is an explosion of buildings taller than anyone has ever seen the limits on masonry buildings were about 200 to 250 feet which is equivalent about 20 stories with the advent of the separation of the two systems the skeleton from the skin we became capable of pushing higher and much higher up to 50 70 80 or the empire state building type up to 100. for over 100 years the steel cage structure has enabled engineers to build skyscrapers higher and higher [Music] it's the backbone of every tall building's design even the 800 foot jr central towers in nagoya the skyscraper is made up of three steel cages one forms the base of the building while two rise up within each tower without this technology skyscrapers rising above 20 stories wouldn't be possible in malaysia over 26 000 tons of steel and 160 000 cubic meters of concrete have been used in the framing of the twin towers these 88-story steel and concrete skeletons will help the petronas towers claim the title tallest building in the [Music] world higher and higher they rise but at what altitude do skyscrapers become too dangerous over 50 years ago a deadly incident magnified these risks in 1945 the tallest building in the world is new york's empire state building rising an incredible 1250 feet built in just over 13 months its claim is the tallest skyscraper will last nearly 40 years perhaps this building's greatest achievement is not its long stay at the top but its jarring reminder of the dangers of building so high the empire state building and all new york city were wrapped in fog as a b-25 mitchell bomber trying to reach a nearby airport crashed into the tallest structure in the world although the pilot and 13 others died the building sustained little damage and was open for business two days later its ability to survive a collision with a world war ii bomber seemed to validate modern engineering technology soon a skyscraper building boom swept across the united states [Music] 29 years later the sears tower is built 1454 feet above chicago becoming the tallest skyscraper in the world [Music] while skyscraper construction within the united states has steadily declined since the early 1970s the jr central towers and the patronus towers are at the forefront of a building boom along the pacific rim [Music] the competition is as fierce as ever you built a skyscraper they're taller and taller some of them make absolutely no economic sense but they're being built nonetheless it's just amazing the number of products are being done out there they're being done strictly for ego there's no other reason there's no economic reason for them to be built other than sheer ego as this construction craze of enormous skyscrapers spreads throughout the pacific rim the engineering world is once again thrown into a battle to become the world's tallest building [Music] the petronas towers are planned to top off at 140cm feet 22 feet taller than the sears tower these very very tall buildings much as the world trade towers in new york or sears in chicago helped give the city a certain image and they've become very important to that city's overall status symbol and image the tall building represents catching up with the west or maybe even going ahead in some cases as more than just pure need only time will tell if this architectural pursuit will prove deadly in new york to avoid future collisions airplanes were simply rerouted but the engineers of the jr central towers and the petronas towers are threatened by unavoidable forces they're building skyscrapers in one of the most seismic active regions in the world where the threat of a major earthquake is constant [Music] relying on the innovative designs that enabled the sears tower and the empire state building to reach such monumental heights won't help they weren't designed with earthquakes in mind how safe will these new structures be when a violent earthquake shakes their very foundations [Music] as construction continues on the jr central towers the patronus tower is near completion engineers of both buildings hope their state-of-the-art technology will pass the test if it fails these latest additions to the tallest buildings in the world could come tumbling down [Music] building design will be pushed to its limits when mother nature strikes the construction of the jr central towers is a collaboration of the top engineering mines in both japan and the united states [Music] it's also one of the most hazardous projects in the world located directly below the site is nagoya station 1.5 million people pass through here each day disregarding the huge skyscraper being built above them but what would happen if an earthquake hit such a densely populated area [Music] it's happened before september 19 1985 a killer earthquake registering 8.0 on the richter scale rocks mexico city [Music] [Music] more than 10 000 people are killed and over 100 000 are left homeless as the quake damages nearly 3 000 structures 400 totally collapsed and for the city's towering skyscrapers once a symbol of modern mexico this is the most devastating quake ever the ground was actually moving back and forth for a minute and a half or so about like this it just sort of a gentle motion back and forth and certainly most buildings if you were in them you'd get a little seasick but you wouldn't feel very much that's not a very violent motion unless you happen to be a tall building during the 90 seconds of shaking in mexico city some skyscrapers swayed six feet three times farther than what is considered safe neighboring buildings slammed into each other causing major damage ten years later a small office in the japanese city of kobe is tossed upside down just one of the many casualties in a town devastated by a 7.2 earthquake [Music] over 100 000 buildings are destroyed another eighty thousand are severely damaged and in downtown kobe home to most of the city skyscrapers sixty percent of the buildings sustain significant structural damage over 20 are completely destroyed [Music] it's in this seismic environment the latest skyscraper building boom has erupted whether guided by sheer need or pure ego architects are designing some of the tallest buildings in the world on some of the most unstable land but the devastating failures in both mexico city and kobe have provided the building community with valuable insights when the earth moves beneath these monoliths the skyscraper's center of gravity becomes offset the top of the building tends to lag behind the base putting more stress on the columns at the very least the building could end up with a permanent bend in it which would yield it an economic total loss although the occupants may survive the situation the worst case would be that it got so far out of vertical that it actually fell over and that of course would be a catastrophic situation using computers to simulate the shaking a building sustains during a major earthquake researchers discovered that strengthening a skyscraper's foundation may prevent these structural failures in nagoya japan only 140 miles from kobe the engineers of the jr central towers are putting this latest research to the test [Music] four stories below the proposed lobby a vast digging campaign is underway in this subterranean cavern architect paul katz hopes to build the strongest foundation ever constructed for a skyscraper to anchor the building to the foundation engineers drive 125 foot high steel beams 60 feet into the bedrock eventually these columns will be encased in steel reinforcement bars and concrete this will become the base frame of the building and bear the majority of its weight you can see here the tremendous amount of reinforcement that is needed not only to carry the weight of the building but this is where all the forces of the building come down and in earthquakes this is the part of the building that resists the lateral shaking uh that an earthquake will affect on a huge structure like this as an added precaution engineers will then fill the entire cavern with over 1.5 million cubic feet of concrete creating what is called a mat slab foundation is what we're seeing in the excavation here is entirely going to be filled with concrete 5.5 meters in height which in a way the whole building then floats on and helps support the building from from tilting and unifies the entire building for a mat slab foundation to work steel piles must be anchored in solid bedrock once in place they're locked together into a stronger structure by the cement slab poured around them finally the steel structure of the skyscraper above ground is bolted to the foundation piles below this becomes the skyscraper skeleton a single rigid structure anchored by a cement slab able to absorb most of an earthquake's lateral force the mat slab foundation prevents the steel cage structure above ground from swaying too far during an earthquake the taller the building the larger the foundation necessary because of the limited space surrounding the skyscraper the jr central towers foundation is forced to be excavated in an underground cavern while the petronas towers foundation will spread out covering over one and a half acres the building that will become the tallest skyscraper in the world requires one of the largest math slab foundations ever constructed before a drop of concrete is poured the bedrock at the proposed side of the twin giants becomes an issue of concern for architect cesar pelle you need to go down to bedrock and you had to go very deep to start finding limestone and the limestone that we found was like swiss cheese this fissured limestone requires drilling the building's foundation piles extraordinarily deep over 400 feet underground or more than six times the depth needed to build the jr central towers once the foundation piles are in over 70 000 tons of concrete are cast into the mat slab pouring around the clock the work continues for three straight days this was the largest single pour of concrete ever done timing and precision of the poor must be perfect if one side of the foundation were to dry and settle before the entire job is completed an uneven base would result if the skyscraper were built on an uneven base the building's weight distribution would be uneven out of balance an earthquake could easily bring it tumbling down but will these enormous math slab foundations safeguard the buildings during a major earthquake [Music] or could they still topple to the ground as in mexico city and kobe [Music] eventually we'll see an earthquake in a in a major city that's a very large earthquake and i think the bad news is that we could see some severe unanticipated damage and perhaps even collapse of some tall buildings the j.r central towers soon to be japan's tallest building is designed to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake its engineers believe the skyscraper is safe built to withstand the types of earthquakes that frequently strike the island nation a similar faith in building design has guided engineers in los angeles for years and on january 17 1994 when a magnitude 6.8 earthquake strikes southern california their faith is shattered in some areas engineering fails and structures crumble amazingly none of la's skyscrapers collapsed but an inspection of their inner steel cage frames reveals major damage in the welds connecting the vertical columns of many buildings to their horizontal beams the cracks did not only remain in the body of the weld that connected the two pieces once it started it propagated that crack had the effect like a zipper effect it went right through the main body of the column element and it ruptured the column horizontally luckily the northridge quake was short only 20 seconds laboratory tests showed that had the shaking lasted as long as either mexico city or cobay these cracked beams would have ruptured completely causing structural failure in many of these buildings while los angeles struggles to repair its damaged skyscrapers the sobering news has sent shockwaves throughout the engineering world the steel cage structure once thought safe is now vulnerable during a strong earthquake [Music] engineers of the jr central towers and the patronus towers must now implement the latest technology to keep their skyscrapers upright to safeguard the millions of people who use nagoya station under the jr central towers and to keep the petronas towers as the tallest building in the world [Music] so [Music] [Music] in the aftermath of the northridge earthquake in southern california tall building engineers have answered a troubling question after years of research a possible solution exists for the stress-induced failures that many buildings sustained during earthquakes all over the world including the jr central towers in nagoya now use what's known as dampers these devices installed within the diagonal trusses of the steel cage structure reduced the building shaking during a quake much like shock absorbers in a car if you put a brace diagonally across across it as you deform the the frame that element would shorten and lengthen and so if in that brace you actually put a damper some sort of hydraulic valve then it would absorb energy as it lengthened and shortened a skyscraper with dampers can absorb up to three times more energy produced by an earthquake than a building without them the longer a quake lasts the more effective a damper can be absorbing more energy with each shock wave tall building engineers have been quick to adopt the damper technology 14 have been installed within petronas twin towers and six are being installed in the jr central towers while engineers in nagoya and kuala lumpur incorporate technology to combat potentially destructive earthquakes another more immediate danger swirls above the wind affects all skyscrapers the taller a building rises the stronger the wind it faces skyscraper design must take into account these turbulent forces towering over 1400 feet above chicago the sears tower sustains daily gusts that can average 75 miles per hour the wind force by and large dominates these very tall buildings dominates the design it's more important than the weight of the building in the sense of just holding it up it is the dominant force the wind is is what drives the design of very tall buildings [Music] when wind hits a building it acts much like the sail of a boat in order to withstand these blustery forces a tall building must be flexible enough to bend and absorb some of the wind while still remaining rigid enough not to topple over or even snap in half [Music] the jr central towers provides a model of how this balance is achieved the three inner steel cages provide flexibility allowing the towers to sway up to four and a half feet in strong winds while the rigid central core of reinforced concrete adds the stability needed to prevent the tower from snapping in winds gusting up to 175 miles per hour [Music] however as skyscrapers are built higher and higher they encounter stronger winds and are required to sway even farther to remain upright architects must now deal with a whole new design problem it's going to wobble like a tuning fork in order to maintain its structural integrity under those forces so the question now is a more difficult one it's not artistic it's not properly scientific it's judgmental and it's about human comfort it's about on those top floors how much vibration can people in offices tolerate and be comfortable with at what point do we need someone at the elevator vestibule the top handing out dramamine [Music] if a swaying skyscraper can cause motion sickness in average high wind conditions then the occupants of the petronas towers had better prepare for a wild ride reaching nearly 1500 feet the twin towers are designed to withstand the devastating winds that strike the region these swirling gusts can reach over 90 miles per hour [Music] already the world record height of these towers has pushed modern technology to its limits each tower needs to sway almost three feet just to prevent a structural collapse [Music] has a vision that will compound this problem a bridge between the two towers a structure that pele feels will be symbolic of something larger than the towers themselves the human spirit we proposed the bridge connecting the two towers in the 40 and 43rd floor and the bridge with its supports marks a gate a gate also to the sky pally's architectural vision clash with the tower's physical reality if each tower must sway independently how can it do so while attached to the bridge the realization of this dream will stretch both peles and the engineers skills to their limits it takes over 30 hours for construction crews to lift the sky bridge into position but the real danger exists after the 900 ton passageway is locked in place [Music] what would happen if the swirling winds hit the twin towers from different angles simultaneously and they swayed in different directions the answer is frighteningly simple the bridge will snap apart plummeting over 600 feet onto a crowded walkway below [Music] to solve this unique design problem engineers borrowed something from earthquake technology dampers critical to the sky bridge's design are its two spherical support legs 117 feet long and weighing 60 tons each in essence these two legs are enormous dampers that will help absorb the vibrations created when both buildings sway to prevent these legs from snapping off when each tower sways in opposite directions a torque reduction system is used instead of anchoring them to the bridge and towers directly the support legs are attached to a rotating plate that can twist at least 45 degrees in any direction the result the damper legs absorb the torque and sway while the bridge's interior support system remains unaffected after the towers open the bridge will serve not only as a passageway between the two towers but also as an escape route in case of fires or emergencies this combination of artistic design and engineering technology allows pali to realize his architectural dream when i face that space between the towers i am in direct contact with the sky with a higher world pelle was able to implement his design for the patronus towers sometimes the forces that can upset plans come from the most unexpected places in japan where cable television hasn't taken root most television signals are broadcast through the air the jr central towers as they're being built today are round in the original plan they were square however it became clear that a rectangular tower 800 feet in the air would block transmission signals from local tv stations the result would be a phenomenon known as tv ghosting tv ghosting is a very common phenomenon if you're if you're looking at your television set and you get two images that are that blur your reception that's called tv ghosting the architects of the jr central towers were surprised by the structural problem and forced to make a multi-million dollar design change or suffer the wrath of thousands of television viewers those curves from an aesthetic point of view they were very nice but also from a technical point what it does is it it takes a direct wave and then diverts it for a building to divert a broadcast wave the exterior can't contain any metal or reflective glass that would cause the wave to bounce back toward the transmission tower so the exterior of the jr central towers had to be made of pre-cast concrete and ceramic tile a much heavier skin than the glass covering originally planned this extra weight on the frame of the skyscraper made it even more necessary to place a massive mat slab foundation underneath the building in the end the architects and engineers for both the jr central towers and the patronus towers are able to fulfill their visions the 800 foot jr central towers will become the tallest building in japan providing desperately needed office and retail space to a growing metropolis and the petronas tower will win the title tallest building in the world but have these engineers while building such enormous skyscrapers prepared for every disaster [Music] or is it impossible for an architect to prepare for the insanity of man [Music] designed to survive the battering of high winds and the violent shaking of earthquakes modern skyscrapers seem indestructible but where mother nature might fail man has succeeded on february 26 1993 a nightmare becomes a reality [Music] the bombing of new york's world trade center ushers in a dark new reality the threat of terrorism has finally come home the blast kills six people injures over one thousand and causes millions of dollars worth of damage but as enormous as the force of the explosion is it doesn't bring down the towers or even cause severe damage to the structure of the building you must understand that towers were designed for the impacting of the largest airplane of its time the intercontinental 707 aircraft right into the building in designing the world trade towers to withstand a mid-air collision engineers learned after the bombing that they had inadvertently built a fire trap both towers actually behaved like giant chimneys and they took this air that was in this basement created by this great explosion and sucked it up into the towers and raised it up through and tried to expel it at the top somewhere among 110 stories fifty 000 people are stranded in complete darkness when emergency systems fail smoke fills the towers and people become desperate for air they smash windows in a frantic search for a way out yet they're alive because the tower didn't collapse the steel cage skeleton absorbed the force of the bomb and prevented its collapse by distributing the blast shock throughout the entire frame however the inner concrete reinforced columns designed to give the towers their rigidity became the vertical conduits for the deadly fire and smoke eventually firefighters were able to release the trapped smoke by smashing windows on the lower floors and cutting air holes in the roof of the towers during the ensuing investigation engineers discovered the structural design of the world trade center can survive a bomb's blast but the building's emergency fire and sprinkler systems can't they were knocked offline allowing the spread of the fire and smoke [Music] since the current steel cage structure is essential to building a skyscraper architects can't change this design component yet disasters like the world trade bombing and the mgm hotel fire of 1977 can turn skyscrapers into towering infernos engineers are now challenged with developing an advanced infrastructure to ensure that the air water and fire systems can function under extreme situations [Music] once again as architects continue to design skyscrapers higher and higher engineers struggled to invent new systems to support these record heights for the engineers of the patronus towers simply providing water to the entire building becomes their biggest obstacle over 600 pounds of pressure will be needed to pump water to the pinnacle of the skyscraper nearly 1500 feet into the sky simply attaching a faucet or sprinkler to such highly pressurized water would be like trying to drink from the end of a firefighter's hose [Music] to solve this problem engineers decide to pump water to the very top of the building and then let it cascade down to pumps located in the maintenance floors below losing its pressure as it trickles down at each floor the water is then distributed throughout the tower in order to achieve this three entire floors within each tower are dedicated solely to maintenance systems located at the 7th 43rd and 81st floors these control areas handle the water air and electrical distribution for the floors attached to their zone if during a fire or explosion one of these maintenance floors is destroyed the other two can operate independently to suppress any fire and ventilate any smoke [Music] during the world trade center bombing once the main control area was knocked offline by the blast all emergency systems throughout the skyscraper were lost the three independent control areas in the patronus towers are designed to avoid just such a fate this decentralized plan provides a reliable means to a more comfortable environment for the tenants you take it for granted that you're cool you're warm there's lights on the bathrooms work there's some very very sophisticated systems in your building particularly today these high-tech solutions to old problems have made possible the continued growth of modern skyscrapers [Music] but this technology doesn't come cheap in nagoya japan it will take seven years to complete the jr central towers [Music] and it's costing one million dollars a day to build this skyscraper but for all the money that's spent it's the skill of the high steel worker that makes all skyscrapers possible in japan the people who work on these tall buildings are some of the most talented and dedicated workers in the world at the jr central towers the project is viewed as a team job each morning workers perform calisthenics together a detailed briefing of precisely what work needs to be completed that day follows the coordination between departments is so precise that the day's work is planned down to the minute the skill of the worker in japan is at a very high level they devote their lives to the construction industry this dedication has paid off for the jr central towers construction is on schedule and under budget with workers completing an astonishing three floors per week elsewhere around the world the completion of one floor per week is acceptable but for the many workers on the high steel in nagoya being average is not acceptable and their passion is spreading japanese engineers and workers often train crews building skyscrapers along the pacific rim they came to kuala lumpur and the results stand before all the world to see highly skilled workers technological advances the dreams of architects these are the ingredients to build the modern skyscraper [Music] its guided engineers to build the jr central towers 800 feet above a crowded metropolis in the heart of earthquake country and its inspired cesar palin to design and erect the tallest building in the world as a monument to a proud city [Music] but in this race to reach new and unimaginable heights how high is high enough [Music] the drive to create the tallest skyscraper in the world has been a hundred year odyssey sweeping engineers and architects far beyond their initial dreams this ambitious race has led cesar pelle and the engineers of the petronas towers to the forefront of modern building design the 800 million dollars invested by their builders have made the petronas towers the tallest building in the world their 88 floors soar 1483 feet into the air or is it engineers of the sears tower say their building still retains the title since it has 110 floors to patrona's 88 but pele's building includes an enormous spire that tops the building off 22 feet higher than the chicago skyscraper sears towers officials counter that if petronas spire is counted then the antennas on their skyscraper should be counted too which raise its height 231 feet taller than the malaysian giant [Music] pally argues that his spire is integral to the design of patronus and the sears antenna are just that antennas but if the height to the tallest antenna is the standard then isn't new york's world trade center the tallest building in the world at 1758 feet [Music] this debate will become more intense very soon because in shanghai ground is broken on the mori towers project when finished it will loom over this ancient chinese city at a height of 1509 feet taller than both sears and patronus [Music] in hong kong manila and tokyo the city skylines are punctuated with buildings under construction is this where the next patronus will rise the key to taller skyscrapers is once again the elevator we took 145 story building put all the elevators in it that were needed by all the people and three million square feet that were to occupy that building the entire floor plate would be taken out by the elevator core and it'd be no space to write and make money on so hey that wouldn't work right recently the otis company announced its latest creation which many believe will solve this dilemma an elevator that can move horizontally as well as vertically by providing access to more areas of a skyscraper with fewer elevators valuable rental space is opened up once a building becomes economically viable to investors how long will it take before a higher one is built and how long before another technological advancement comes along that raises tall buildings to unheard of heights in metropolis filmmaker fritz lang's prophesizing drama of 1928 even the sky isn't insurmountable but is there a physical boundary beyond which science can never advance years ago a mile-high building with atomic-powered elevators connecting over 528 floors was designed by american architect frank lloyd wright if built a skyscraper this tall would stand over five times the height of today's tallest structures forty years ago a mile high building seemed a futuristic folly but is it still [Music] as technology continues to advance engineers now say a mile-high building is possible new lighter building materials are the key [Music] already ceramics are being used in the exterior walls of the jr central towers to lighten the total weight of the building and reduce the stress on the earthquake sensitive foundation the future is going to be you do not limit yourself to natural materials like steel or aluminum or masonry where you compose materials and you create new properties out of hybrid materials alloys or ceramics or plastics carbon fibers or mixes of all this eventually these new materials will give rise to skyscrapers taller than anyone has ever seen surpassing both the jr central towers and the patronus towers today's architectural marvels [Music] these monoliths of the future may also be closer to lang's vision of the future not just a tower of office space but self-contained cities within a building everything is in one building you can have retail you can have hotel office apartments and you can have transportation all in one single building you can go to one location and get everything you want since their earliest beginnings skyscrapers have evoked unexplainable emotions in us from pride to awe to fear have they evolved to become buildings that provide the space needed for a growing population or just an exploitation of those needs a justification to build what cesar pali calls a gateway to the skies i do not know if it's innate in human beings or acquired culturally but there is something magic and extraordinary or a structure that grows from the ground and moves up and reaches the sky when you are up on a building you and the ground are one somehow you feel that through your body through your feet through the structure of the building you are still rooted on the ground but you are looking above all other buildings and there is just something extraordinarily satisfying i imagine the tallest oak in a forest or the tallest sequoia must feel the same thing [Music] perhaps these monuments that we leave behind tell much of the human story itself [Music] they speak with stunning eloquence of our ambition and our brilliance but also of our frailty as they puncture the skies above our urban landscape skyscrapers also punch holes in our preconception of what's possible what was impossible yesterday now stands before us [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] [Music] deep beneath the english channel one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever attempted is about to begin using earth-eating robotic monsters 13 000 workers are about to embark upon an epic quest to build the longest undersea railway tunnel in the world this historic journey will push the limits of technology and human determination to the breaking point some workers will not survive but the creation of the euro tunnel is a story of triumph one of this century's greatest superstructures [Music] [Music] [Applause] ever since the ice age ripped them apart ten thousand years ago a small finger of ocean the english channel has been the only path between england and europe [Music] throughout history countless lives have been lost trying to cross this treacherous body of water for centuries amateur designers and skilled engineers alike have tried and failed to create a safe permanent link the first channel tunnel design if you can call it a design was in 1802 but at that time the technology was so limited that really it was science fiction but by the end of the 20th century the line separating technology and science fiction is rapidly disappearing it is now possible to create machines the size of large buildings machines that can literally move mountains inside factories like these engineers begin experimenting with space-age technologies to take humans into new and potentially dangerous territories soon an age-old question is asked once more can a tunnel be created under the english channel but does england herself even want such a passageway from the days of camelot to the age of churchill the channel's cold choppy waters formed an imposing barrier between the monarchy and its enemies would-be conquerors from napoleon to hitler developed plans of how they could first defeat the english channel and then england itself ironically during world war ii adolf hitler developed a plan to dig a tunnel near the captured french town of calais site of the modern day french euro tunnel station it was a threat the allied forces took seriously bomber pilots were requested to report any plumes of grey material in the channel and they actually established soldiers along the coast here with listening devices trying to detect any sounds of tunneling but with the defeat of germany in world war ii europe entered a new era [Music] the sounds of war were replaced by the sounds of commerce by 1986 one-time rivals england and france decide the channel has become an economic barrier an obstacle that must be eliminated to achieve this the french and british governments dedicate themselves to the task of building a modern marvel the world's most technologically advanced undersea tunnel engineers and business people alike dream of high-speed rail trains traveling beneath the english channel carrying the citizens of a united europe into newfound economic opportunity but before the first shovel of dirt is even dug the project seems destined for failure this was a nightmare at the time we had to decide on things which we didn't really know about and one example which i always quote is what diameter do you want for the tunnel now you would think that this was something that had been decided before but it hadn't and the contractors kept pestering us saying what what size tunnel do you want and we said well listen we just arrived i don't know for as long as we can all remember people have dreamed of a channel tunnel as this ad seeking euro tunnel investors points out the project was financed solely by private investment with an original price tag of over 10 billion dollars this made it very different from other large engineering projects of this century like new york city's lincoln tunnel which was government funded ultimately eurotunnel had to answer to its shareholders but despite the private backing there was much public opposition especially on the british side some opponents were concerned about the environmental impact of the project while others didn't want to surrender england's status as a proud island empire the project's decision-making body a consortium of 10 companies called trans monch limited or tml is undaunted they plan a design of three parallel tube-like tunnels when finished these massive tunnels will form a railway loop between england and france engineers envision a system that will carry thousands of passengers and hundreds of tons of freight each day on this circular 30-minute trip of the 35 miles between the french terminal at calais and the british terminal at folkstone 24 will be undersea no other project has ever attempted to tunnel this far in such a hostile environment there are lots of problems technical problems how will a car move inside the tunnel what kind of trucks can i transport you know all the variety of things as the project begins in late 1986 all of these questions remain but before issues regarding the tunnel's operation can be addressed the most daunting and obvious problem must first be solved a machine that can chew through more than 30 miles of solid rock hundreds of feet below the sea doesn't exist it will have to be created thousands of miles from the english channel on the outskirts of seattle washington a solution is being forged of iron and steel here at the robin's company a firm specializing in heavy mining and tunneling equipment the next breed of super machines is being created in this colossal factory is a mechanical beast that dwarfs its creators it's called a tunnel boring machine or tbm when finished this giant snake-like earth mover will be over 800 feet long and weigh over 1500 tons its rotating head almost 50 feet in diameter consists of hundreds of cutting edges made from tungsten carbide one of the hardest materials known to man these will be the teeth of this mechanical monster the cutting force it will use to chew through the earth below the channel [Music] pushing the machine forward is a series of powerful hydraulic devices called rams which will drive the cutting head through the rock the millions of tons of excess rock it will dig up called spoil will be carried out on conveyor belts through the tbm service train attached to the cutting head the challenge of carving tunnels through solid rock has always pushed the boundaries of our engineering and manufacturing skill even today it requires a rare balance of brain and brawn when large-scale projects like the los angeles aqueduct system were being created in the 1930s tunneling technology was in its infancy today the robin's company will replace blasts of dynamite with a computerized mechanical marvel of which the early pioneers could only dream but the danger these modern miners face will also be unparalleled at its deepest point the tunnel will be 246 feet below the seabed during construction if their boring efforts create a crack in the tunnel or cause a leak the force of the incoming water will be equivalent to over 7 000 tons of falling weight man and machine would be crushed in an instant at the robin's company frightening scenarios like these must be addressed project organizers selected the tunnel's route precisely because it goes through a layer of chalk called marl which is well suited to their tunneling efforts it is also the last remnants of the original land bridge that once connected england and france over 10 000 years ago while this chalk is ideal for tunneling on the british side the situation on the french side of the channel is far more treacherous here the seabed is riddled with faults and fissures conditions that could lead to the deadly accidents engineers must try to prevent of the 11 tbms that will be created for this mission the machine that will be used on the french side faces the most difficult job working at greater depths in parts of the seabed that are far less stable than the british side this undersea giant will have to withstand pressures twice as intense as any tunneling machine has ever experienced so engineers decide to create a special tbm that is part boring machine part submarine when finished it will be able to withstand the same amount of undersea pressure as a world war ii sub finally the technology behind the dream of reuniting the european continent seems to be in place and while the project will ultimately link england and france the massive construction process will be an international effort companies from germany to japan will add their technologies to the mix making the euro tunnel a truly global undertaking [Music] while this international force rallies to overcome the physical obstacles in the channel there are other challenges already mounting namely the race to complete the tunnel on time and on budget it is now december 1987. this is where the euro tunnel begins two huge shafts at sangot france and shakespeare cliff in england [Music] too enormous to be delivered to the site as complete machines the first tbms are lowered piece by piece into the darkness of the shafts 200 feet below [Music] going with them are the workers the men behind the machines they too are descending into the unknown taking the first steps of an epic journey as the first work begins and the light of day slowly disappears there is an air of hope expectation and much uncertainty while extraordinary safety measures have been taken to protect the workers it remains a dangerous world and for some the greatest civil engineering project of the 20th century will carry the ultimate price tag as giant mechanical earth eaters are given a final check before being lowered to their work site hundreds of feet below the ground one of this century's most ambitious engineering projects is underway the creation of an undersea railway that will link england and france begins here in sun got france and here at britain's shakespeare cliff near the site of the future folkstone terminal what officials hope will someday be the world's premier railway system is now just a hole beneath the earth the race is on compounding the awesome challenge of the actual tunneling operation is a human challenge british and french workers once bitter rivals must now learn to work together once they reach the dark and dangerous caverns deep below the earth there can be no room for cultural misunderstandings a french engineer is trained to make a plan they can't start work unless they can see what there is to be done see where their task fits into the whole thing and see how it's all going to be organized as it goes along no such thing in the british culture british culture is to sit down and say now what have we got to do chaps and sort out who's going to do what and set to work one of the first problems they face is the assembly of the giant tunnel boring machines which the workers christen the moles even the smallest machine takes months to build and costs several millions of dollars the largest of these subterranean titans weighs 1500 tons because of their enormous size and weight the tbms must be assembled on site which in this case is far below the earth the actual cutting head of the tbm is just the tip of its immense body attached to it is the service train a multi-car train system that carries the hydraulic power to drive the tbms forward when connected to the cutting head each service train is a staggering 850 feet long one of the service trains main functions is to be a conduit for the removal of millions of tons of rock and sediment these mechanical moles will dig up the debris will be carried by conveyor belt through the service train to a supply train and back and finally to disposal facilities in england and france the removal of the spoil is a major challenge when operating at full speed engineers estimate the tbms will cut through 750 feet of rock per day removing 2400 tons of waste per hour when the project is finished the total amount of rock removed would fill a major football stadium 13 times but equally important as taking material out of the tunnel is the challenge of getting materials in and one of the most crucial building blocks at this underground work site are the half million concrete slabs which will line the tunnel walls because these concrete rings will provide a life-saving barrier between passengers and the churning english channel above them their construction is of utmost importance special factories are built in england and france to manufacture these vital sections each ring is made of specially reinforced concrete even stronger than the concrete used in nuclear power plants it is also reinforced with a framework of steel rods for extra resistance this is necessary because the savage ocean pressure that will bear down on the tunnel walls is equivalent to 12 atmospheres or 12 times the pressure we feel on the surface no human could survive under such immense force once the rings are finished they are transported by narrow gauge railway to the tbms in the tunnel and brought up through the service train then a remarkable display of mechanical symmetry takes place as the spinning head of the machine claws its way through the rock operators using giant cranes create the tunnel walls right behind them after being fitted into place with incredible precision a gap of only three quarters of an inch remains between each section this tiny space is then sealed with a cement grout and another piece of the tunnel wall is complete when finished each ring of the tunnel will weigh 40 tons but just as the skeleton of the tunnel is beginning to take shape the project suddenly seems in danger of falling apart it is now 1988 the british and french teams are starting with the middle service tunnel drilling towards each other to meet in the middle of the channel but by may the giant tunneling machines begin to break down it was designed to operate at pressures that no machine had ever operated before it was strictly a prototype as a result of the fact that it was so complex and nothing like it had ever been built it had all kinds of troubles practically everything important on the machine failed or broke at one time or another shortly after we installed the machine on the french side the tbms are encountering precisely the scenario engineers feared the most hidden faults and fissures in the seabed on the other side of these cracks lie the awesome forces of the english channel it was uh technically very difficult because the water pressure that we had to work in as the machine board forwarded board right through faults that were filled with seawater connected directly to the ocean waterproofing measures designed to protect the tbm's delicate electronic equipment from the seawater fail stopping the giant machine in its tracks then as engineers scrambled to repair the electrical problem another even larger problem develops this is the seal we intend to use it's a wire brush type seal the ring of watertight seals providing a life-saving barrier between the tbm and the tunnel walls also begin to fail again victims of salt water corrosion engineers need a solution and fast the corroded brush-like lining seals are replaced then a mixture of paper and special grease is applied to the brushes when this coating comes in contact with seawater the paper particles expand and create a permanent watertight bond between the segments the tbm is once again waterproof but to robin's company president richard robbins the tunnel wall seemed far more secure than the legal agreement he is working under soon he is forced into a desperate personal gamble the french contractor knew that we had designed a prototype machine that we didn't really understand exactly what it was going to cost us to build so he built into the job some interesting incentives that if we met certain project construction points along the tunnel by certain dates we would earn bonuses but it was so bad in the early stages that i was really almost betting the entire company that we would succeed so it was a big risk for a small company like ours but it isn't just contractors like the robin's company who are gambling their future because the entire project is privately funded euro tunnel officials must hit their own deadlines to continue to receive funding with each new delay the entire fate of the euro tunnel lies in the balance the one thing we all understood was that if we stopped it would be very hard to restart the relationship with the banks the problems with the contractors the difficulties with the governments or just plain organizational difficulties of whatever kind would very probably bring an end to the project finally engineers are able to redesign the mechanical flaws in the french tbm and move ahead but they are now nine months behind schedule to make up the time both the british team and the french team must stay on course but how will these mole like machines tunneling towards each other from opposite directions maintain such a specific course they are far too deep below the earth for high-tech satellite mapping to be of any use and even the slightest deviation in their course a fraction of one degree will mean they fail to meet up under the channel to remain on track tunnel engineers use a space age laser beam guidance system here a red laser emits a beam from behind the cutting head as it sends a beam of light forward it hits various control points fixed to the tunnel wall before striking a special target on the rear of the cutting head these control points feed information provided from the laser straight into the machine's onboard computer from the tbm control cabin operators can now adjust the hydraulic rams that thrust the tbm forward and keep it precisely on the right course but even if the two machines do stay on course the complex plan for after they meet has never been tried before as the french and british tbms tunnel towards each other they will reach a designated point where they will stop they will now be a mere 100 yards apart at that point a long steel probe will be sent through to determine if they have been truly on course if so more conventional equipment will finish the relatively short distance that remains but if the two machines are off course it will mean yet another delay while engineers try and come up with a solution and with the project skyrocketing budget under fire more delays could signal the end of the dream called euro tunnel [Music] 1989 the year begins on a positive note at the euro tunnel construction sites the earlier problems with the french tunnel boring machine seem to be solved one of the giant tbms even sets a world tunneling record for almost three years work on the tunnel has progressed without a fatality but in the first days of a new year a time usually associated with hope and new beginnings tragedy lies just around the corner [Music] on january 20th in the dark recesses of this massive cavern the tunnel claims its first victim 19 year old engineer's assistant andrew mckenna is walking half a mile down the tunnel beside the narrow gauge railway tracks used by the supply carts apparently failing to hear an oncoming train he is suddenly crushed to death by a locomotive carrying spoil from the site without warning the stark reality of their dangerous jobs becomes clear to every worker the tunnel has claimed one of their own [Music] even with 20th century technology the job of building tunnels remains extremely hazardous while workers cope with the loss they also have to deal with other day-to-day fears brought on by the tunnel at the pumping stations they actually went underneath the tunnels and they would be like a little tunnel and under the main tunnels so the trains will be going above you and you can be down working in three foot of water in a little cross passage with a blank wall with nowhere else to go and that that could be very claustrophobic and we actually experienced people being sent in to work with us who were and found out their claustrophobic and then it was it became a little bit scary because you had to say to them look you can't work with us down there you're you're terrified of the situation and you have to think of everybody else's safety it was dark it could be dusty so you had to be able to cope another sort of a sort of positive outlook really even with the most rigid of safety standards the death of andrew mckenna will not be the last tunnel casualty in all 12 people will die in this historic and sometimes tragic undertaking and while the mood of the workers has turned suddenly dark the tunnel itself remains unchanged here it is always dark workers who refer to their machines as moles are left wondering if they are the real underground creatures you could be on a day shift where you arrived at work five o'clock in the morning and it was pitch black you could go into a tunnel work all day in darkness or semi-light not bright and then you come out at five o'clock the end of your day and it was dark again so you could go a whole week without seeing daylight and that was a very weird experience because you know it's day time and you never saw it as workers move forward in the darkness below ground above them work continues on the high-tech trains that will use the system when it's finished the new service being created exclusively for the euro tunnel is called the shuttle tunnel officials say the name is an example of the anglo-french cooperation that characterizes the project when finished the shuttle trains will carry passengers in their cars on a continuous loop between the folkstone terminal in england and the kalei terminal in france in plants like these workers use more than ten thousand welds to mold more than five thousand parts into the single shell of a train car each le shuttle train is being specially built for the frequent trips and heavy loads it will haul to provide maximum power a 132-ton locomotive is placed at each end of the train they have to be very special trains because the trains themselves are half a mile long and they have a lot of cars inside them or a lot of trucks and therefore the locomotives have to be very powerful they're the most powerful locomotives in the world each of these locomotives must be capable of pulling a 2400 ton train by itself for this kind of power they will draw upon 25 000 volt electrical cables this high voltage energy source provides the equivalent force of a 7600 horsepower engine about a hundred times the power of an average car while the shuttle trains have the most powerful locomotives on earth the sleek eurostar trains have the world's fastest the eurostar passenger line uses the popular tgv trains which will travel from paris to london at speeds of 185 miles per hour while in the tunnel the trains will travel at more subdued speeds approaching 100 miles per hour because the transporting of commercial freight will be so important to eurotunnel's economic success huge new rail cars are designed to transport heavy trucks each freight shuttle also a service of less shuttle will have 28 carrier wagons like these each carrier wagon can accommodate a truck weighing up to 44 tons below the earth there is no finish railway for any train to travel upon but that is about to change it is now october 30th 1990 there's a new feeling in the air today a feeling of expectation after three years of tunneling the british and french tbm's digging the service tunnel which will run between the two rail tunnels have arrived at their undersea destination facing each other under the english channel 100 yards apart the machines have stopped their digging it is strangely quiet the same question races through each worker's mind have they lined up a probe is sent through there's a tense silence each worker at every level of the project knows it will be a catastrophe if the tunnels are off course this would be the type of mistake that could fuel the flames of anti-tunnel sentiment into a raging fire finally they get the news [Music] the tunnels line up [Applause] england by virtue of a 100 yard pole is no longer an island [Music] after boring through 23 miles of solid rock the tunnels are only off by 20 inches well within the acceptable safety margin it is a momentous achievement while the project's workers a unique collection of specialists from across the globe revel in their victory a celebration is quickly planned for the face-to-face breakthrough since there is still a 100-yard gap between england and france to close it is decided that the official breakthrough of the service tunnel will take place on december 1st [Music] as workers return to their jobs with a new sense of accomplishment a lottery is held to pick one worker from each country to meet in the completed tunnel meanwhile there is the problem of what to do about the last 100 yards it is too expensive to retrieve both the french and the british machines so a unique solution is developed the british aim their machine downward and effectively commit mechanical suicide burying the high-tech behemoth deep into the earth this allows the french tbm to move forward and connect with the british side of the tunnel december 1st 1990 finally the moment of truth arrives a thin layer of chalk essentially a prop for this massive media event is now all that separates frenchman philippe cosette and englishman graham fagg with a couple of well-directed jackhammer blasts a barrier that has stood for 10 000 years is gone [Applause] one of the most ambitious engineering efforts of the 20th century climaxes with a simple gesture of goodwill hundreds of feet below the english channel a frenchman and an englishman meet through a small hole for the first time since glaciers ripped them apart thousands of years ago france and england are once again linked [Applause] [Applause] the atmosphere was absolutely electric down there not only just at the breakthrough but afterwards and people removed we all felt european i don't think anybody felt english or french we were all european at the instant and for the brief hour before we could actually set off back to our respective sides amazing scenes really wouldn't have missed it for anything the next few months will hold many more extraordinary moments the public gets their chance to share in history with the above ground breakthroughs first in france and then in england [Applause] when that tunnel broke through there was a party that would end all parties it practically went all night it was at the windsor castle on the british side fireworks and feasting and about a thousand guests and it was it was really a marvelous party what i remember is sitting down there having the feeling there is no more machinery running now and a feeling in amongst the most tremendous uproar popping champagne corks and backslapping and cheering and so on a feeling of absolute silence it's the most extraordinary feeling but amidst the revelry and the silence the realization begins to sink in that there is still a long way to go two more tunnels need to be created not to mention the installation of the high-speed railway work on the euro tunnel is far from over [Applause] as the parties celebrating the breakthrough of the service tunnel fade away efforts to complete the two remaining tunnels resume at an energetic pace the two main rail tunnels are called running tunnels to allow trains to switch from one track to another massive crossover caverns are carved from the seabed 40 feet high and over 500 feet long they are the largest undersea caverns ever created [Music] workers refer to these massive structures as cathedrals but in the event of a deadly fire they could quickly become a scene of mass terror to prevent fire from spreading from one running tunnel to the other engineers build giant doors to separate the two tunnels each door is made from super strong carbon manganese steel then a half inch layer of flame resistant material is added these fireproof walls are a movable fortress weighing over 100 tons each but fire isn't the only emergency tunnel officials must prepare for terrorist attacks bomb threats and even the remote possibility of an earthquake are all scenarios which must be planned for the evacuation train will be with us in approximately six minutes time specially trained security force and evacuation teams are established that constantly rehearse emergency procedures while they speak the same language in times of emergency french and british officials still have different beliefs regarding issues of safety there are two different safety philosophies the french have a belief in intelligent operators using sophisticated equipment but in charge of the equipment the british have a culture of fail-safe computers channel town you've got an aggregation of both so you can be quite sure whichever you think is better tunnel's got it no other tunnel in the world is as safe as this one with the central service tunnel the fire supply systems duplication of power supplies emergency walkways and all the procedures that have been put in place to cover every eventuality but there is one eventuality engineers haven't planned for as engineers perform test runs in the tunnels the friction of the trains is producing an enormous amount of heat raising temperatures to a scorching 140 degrees fahrenheit scrambling for a solution engineers create a pipeline filled with chilled flowing water to keep the heat in the tunnel from accumulating this cold water acts like a sponge to absorb the tunnel's heat the water now very warm is then pumped to a cooling station on shore re-chilled and re-circulated once again elsewhere the two stations that will serve as euro tunnel's passenger hubs are beginning to take shape the massive french terminal at calais is one of the largest construction projects in the world within its sprawling 11 mile perimeter the kalei station will have 30 miles of roadway and 30 miles of railway track while the british terminal at folkstone is tiny in comparison five times smaller than the french station it will house the nerve center of the entire eurotunnel system standby here in the folkstone command center operators use state-of-the-art technology to control all of the rail traffic that moves through the tunnel sitting behind three rows of desks they can survey a curved wall showing the status of the entire system this high-tech display is called a mimic board it shows the position of every train in the tunnel and at the terminals in the event of a power failure tunnel control will immediately switch over to the clay control center which is staffed at all times in case of emergency even the drivers of the shuttle trains will receive a little high-tech help in this driving simulator operators practice navigating through the tunnel in real life the driver of each shuttle will sit in the front locomotive while the captain of the train sits in the rear locomotive the captain who is ultimately responsible for the safety of the passengers communicates with the driver by intercom but the onboard computers also have command status if the train begins to move too fast the shuttle brakes will go on automatically [Music] by the middle of 1991 the project's infrastructure is beginning to take form from the terminals to the trains themselves it is beginning to look like the dream of an undersea rail link will be realized but deep underground two more hurdles remain the completion of the northern and southern rail tunnels on may 22nd the first of those obstacles disappears into history as the northern running tunnel is finished [Music] this is the tunnel that will carry passengers from britain to france but today it is a symbol of a united europe just over a month later on june 28 1991 more celebrations as a huge crowd gathers for the completion of the southern tunnel the last tbm punches through the remaining wall and comes to a stop [Applause] four years after the digging began one of the most difficult engineering challenges in history is now complete while workers celebrate and drink champagne the machines finally fall silent in the long colorful history of these two countries this is a singular moment french or british project chairman or supply cart driver for a moment it doesn't matter what is being created here and what has been achieved to date is of enormous value for the future of both our countries and of europe thank you in all over 13 000 workers have labored for more than six years besides the three main undersea tunnels each over 30 miles long nine other smaller access tunnels were also created the amount of material removed on the british side increased her majesty's kingdom by 75 acres engineers believe the hard part is over in fact contractors like richard robbins collect bonuses for finishing ahead of schedule but when today's party is over tomorrow morning will usher in the stark reality of a bloated budget and an uncertain future to eurotunnel officials the hard part may have just begun with the digging of the southern railway tunnel finished the seven years struggled to build the world's longest undersea tunnel nears completion the narrow gauge railway tracks which carried supplies into the tunnels are replaced by a new concrete floor this will support the wider standard gauge railway tracks on which high-speed trains will travel at 100 miles per hour over 300 000 rubber shock absorbers are installed to secure 60 miles of track the powerful locomotives that will pull trains half a mile long 20 times a day are delivered to the terminal at calais france finally on may 6 1994 the grand experiment is about to begin after boarding one of the luxury eurostar trains in london her majesty queen elizabeth ii arrives in calais france this will be just the first part of an all-day celebration scheduled in both countries her majesty is received by french president francois mitterrand after a ribbon-cutting ceremony the queen and the french president depart in her majesty's rolls-royce to travel on the shuttle back to england [Music] the image is a powerful one not only are the former adversaries the eurotunnel ceremonial first passengers they are also the public image of the new european able to cross a once formidable barrier with grace and ease arriving back in england for the second phase of the ceremony her majesty takes time to greet each crew member honored with making this historic inaugural journey but as the ceremonies and the media tension fade away so does the public's interest initial usage of the tunnel is far below expectations critics of the euro tunnels costs now almost 21 billion dollars are again on the war path less than two years later evening broadcasts spread the news officials feared the most an accident has happened in the tunnel on november 18 1996 fire rips through a freight train bound for england 11 miles from the french entrance [Music] trapped in smothering fumes for nearly half an hour passengers ignore requests to wait for help and abandon the train groping their way to safety in the service tunnel the fire is so hot it transforms the cargo of mammoth trucks into unrecognizable lumps of melted steel eight of the 34 crew members suffer smoke inhalation and the tunnel is badly damaged what has been called the safest tunnel in the world is now brought to its knees amid a firestorm of public controversy the euro tunnel is closed 1500 feet of railroad track and 150 feet of the tunnel's concrete lining are wrecked and need to be replaced the damage caused by this accident estimated at almost 100 million dollars makes it one of the costliest rail accidents in history while no one was seriously injured public confidence in the tunnel plummets euro tunnel officials go on the defensive 12 hours later nobody was in hospital yet there had been a 1 500 degree centigrade fire 300 feet away from them nobody was in hospital now say that about a highway crash or about a ferry sinking or about a plane crash you can't 17 days later eurotunnel officials stage an emergency evacuation exercise designed to reassure the public the tunnel is safe a drill critics say has more to do with public relations than public safety despite this disaster the northern tunnel reopens to passenger traffic several weeks later but the badly burned section of the southern rail tunnel is closed for six months while the damaged tracks are repaired finally commercial freight traffic resumes on june 15th almost seven months after the accident as this disaster fades from the headlines memories of the accident slowly fade with it [Music] but what hasn't gone away is the sacrifice made by over 13 000 men and women who created this architectural marvel this plaque at england's shakespeare cliff pays tribute to the 12 workers who lost their lives working to create the euro tunnel theirs was the ultimate sacrifice [Music] but thousands of workers also gave a great portion of their lives to work far below the earth cut off from their families and the rest of the world my son was one when i started on it and when i finished he was six now i do feel i missed a major part of his growing up for i be by being on the tunnel the job of being a tunneler of staring in a mountain or ocean and seeing a way to cross it has always required a special type of person a person who can exist without natural light in suffocating holes working for long periods of time towards a seemingly impossible goal tunnelers are a special breed of people they move around the world building holes in the ground uh most of their work is never seen by anybody else but they they do take a pride in building a good tunnel it remains to be seen whether or not the euro tunnel will be a financial success but officials say immediate financial return was not the sole concern of every investor the philosophy of the investors was not mostly financial they said it doesn't matter whether we don't see any return we think the benefits for our children our grandchildren are going to be extremely important the folkstone terminal in england and the calais terminal in france are now ports of call to thousands of travelers this undersea journey for centuries the subject of scorn and ridicule now seems routine the shortest distance between two points if you were british and you lived here um we're an island and if you want to get off this island in the past the only way is either to get on a boat or to fly and for the first time ever now you can take a train you don't have to change you don't have to get off you get on the train in central london and you get off and you're suddenly in central paris and it's a whole new culture whatever brings these travelers to england or france the size of the world they lived in before the euro tunnel is smaller now a physical barrier that has stood for 10 000 years is gone europe is already more united whatever the political structures whatever the legislative structures the economic and social coming together is unstoppable and it's happening and the tunnel plays a key part and it's symbolic of it the euro tunnel remains one of the greatest engineering achievements of this century for the thousands of men and women who built this tunnel it stands as a monument to their belief that the impossible is simply a challenge a temporary obstacle that can be overcome with technology skill and perseverance having lived with it for the last 10 12 years i feel something special about it every time i come in i'm quite amazed by the amount of work that went into the tunnel the complexity of all the equipment and the the short time that it took to to build this modern wonder of the world in the end the euro tunnel may be viewed as more of a bridge than a tunnel as these high-tech trains speed beneath the ocean crossing cultural barriers as they go the free exchange of new ideas they carry with them will remain their most precious passenger so [Music] [Music] [Music] on a stone age island at the ends of the earth is an astonishing superstructure whose very existence defies imagination to build it men climbed mountains no one could climb gave their lives building roads no one could build drive the world's biggest trucks and shovels where they could not go thousands of feet into the sky into a deadly realm of blinding fogs and perilous quests for staggering riches they did it all to mine a hidden fortune a mountain made of gold [Music] in our age of satellites cell phones and cyberspace there are still a few hidden places left on earth one of them is irian jaya a land born of fire crowned by ice where pathless jungles swelter in equatorial heat where freezing mists envelop soaring mountains and men still live untouched by time some 75 miles from its jungle shores a wall of mountains soars to sixteen thousand feet the highest peaks between the andes and the himalayas atop them gleams a natural wonder magnificent glaciers spawned by the ice age some fifteen thousand years ago only five degrees south of the equator [Music] just below these glaciers lies a wonder of man two gigantic mines called grossberg and ernstberg less than two miles apart and nearly fourteen thousand feet high [Applause] before it's exhausted this megamine may yield more gold than the entire california gold rush many call it the most spectacular mineral deposit ever found it's a mountain of ore but it's not just that it's also a root of ore so if you had a tooth you know and you can see the part that sticks above the gum that that's what most people mine but if you extracted that tooth and it's got that long root on it we've got that as well and it's also full of ore so you're looking at a vertical mile of of gold ore body it's just incredible grossberg and erzberg lie some 700 miles north of australia and 2 000 miles east of indonesia's capital jakarta in the western half of new guinea second largest island in the world once a dutch colony irian jaya is now an indonesian province and home of some of the world's richest deposits of copper and gold [Music] but irian jaya is not surrendering its treasures without a fight the grossberg erzberg mining complex took 20 years to build cost more than 3 billion and took its toll in human life at its dizzying altitudes men must work 24 hours a day seven days a week to make mining profitable in one of the most remote locations on earth the tough part about this was is that mother nature implanted this wonder floor body at 13 000 feet and she said come get it and we had to go get it when you go up there to try to explain it to somebody the best way is that you're going to walk away with your mouth open you're going to be a gog people are going to say how in the world did you do that this incredible story begins with one man [Music] a dutch geologist named jean-jacques dozy [Music] in 1993 aged 84 he returned to visit the mine his courage made possible in 1936 27 year old dosie vowed to be the first man to reach irian jaya's tropical glaciers it seemed a reckless boast europeans had been launching expeditions to irian jaya's hinterland for 300 years none had broken through the deadly labyrinth of jungle between the mountains and the sea [Music] the only way to make your way inland is by river the problem with the rivers is that you don't know where the rivers are leading this was a problem with the very first expeditions that came to this area that tried to reach the glaciers that took the wrong river they spent a year and a half trying to get to the glacier just because they took the wrong river [Music] it seemed unlikely that dosie would succeed where so many others had failed [Music] but dozy possessed a recent 20th century invention which lifted him over the jungle and showed him the way to go doozy had the advantage of knowing what the terrain looked like from the air once you knew the terrain once you knew which river to take once you knew what the lay of the land fairly well you could move a lot faster on october 29 1936 dozy two friends and eight porters started up the iqua river they paddled to where the mountains began and started walking we just walked up as far as we could started cutting followed the trail made a trail and the higher we came the more tougher it became after a while they didn't know where they were anymore because they had aerial photographs up to a point but then the jungle gets pretty steep and you're not quite sure how far you have to go exhausted as he was the geologist dosie took time to sketch a peculiar rock formation [Music] you had a blackish black rock wall a black mountain with green and blue large specks on it and well being a geologist i of course recognize that there should be some copper endurance into that rock but at that moment that had to go on dozie had no way of knowing how right he was in fact he had stumbled upon one of the greatest geological discoveries of all time [Music] three million years ago a series of volcanic eruptions injected riches into the mountains of irian the erupting volcanoes opened up cracks deep within the earth propelled by hot gases molten magma from the earth's core flowed into these fissures carrying with it unusually high concentrations of copper and gold one of them was jean-jacques dosi's strange black mountain the biggest copper deposit ever discovered above the surface of the earth dosey collected a few ore samples from the curious copper mountain on his field maps he named it herzberg dutch for mountain of ore back in holland he wrote a report describing his discovery but his timing could not have been worse dosie published his report in the summer of 1939. on september 3rd world war ii began [Music] while holland suffered under nazi occupation the erzberg report gathered dust [Music] 20 years later a dutch geologist gave it to forbes wilson wilson was chief mining engineer for freeport an american mining company forbes was a man who had to be the best or the biggest or the fastest or the smartest with anything and everything and indeed he was in many areas that's part of the reason i think that we today are mining in the earthquake complex wilson was looking for nickel deposits but when he read dozie's description of the erzberg he forgot all about nickel after forbes wilson read the dosey report and it became part of his being we can almost say that it became a holy grail for him he was a man 50 years old at the time and the heavy smoker he gave up smoking got himself in shape and organized this expedition he had to find for and see for himself herzberg on may 30th 1960 forbes wilson plunged into the jungle determined to reach the erzberg he asked his friend and fellow geologist delos flint to come along flint jumped at the chance to take part in the adventure of a lifetime despite the perils of trekking through irian jaya [Music] the worst thing there were the leeches and if you looked at a bush the elite should be there trying to find something warm that he could attach to we'd always get a few and one time i found one on the roof of my mouth if i hadn't been busy talking i guess i wouldn't have had it happen but leeches weren't the only unfriendly locals only one year after the forbes wilson expedition the explorer michael rockefeller vanished in irian jaya some believe the son of governor nelson rockefeller drowned or was killed by sharks but others are convinced he was eaten by cannibals when dill flint and forbes wilson first encountered irian's indigenous peoples they felt threatened but for a different reason even though you've seen pictures of them with their uh gourds covering their privates the first time you see it it's a real shock you feel very uh well unequipped as well put it they came in with all their finery and charged like they were being uh a raid in war which sort of gave you you know but they turned it into a dance and everybody was happy on june 16 1960 after 18 days of hard travel del flint and forbes wilson found the erzberg [Music] a surface inspection convinced them that it was indeed a mineralogical marvel thickly laced with enormous chunks of a yellow copper ore known as calcopyrite there'd be blobs that uh up to four feet across or perhaps even longer that were solid calcaparic and when you saw that it was just you boggled your mind when i first got there and got up on the thing i just screamed like tires and this yo god i'm mine all mine the two american geologists had proved that erzberg was really a mountain of ore but jean-jacques dosie had called it a mountain of ore on the moon who could build a mine in one of the most inaccessible places on earth in the 1960s irian jaya's mountain of copper and gold appeared as spectacular as forbes wilson believed it would be [Music] rock samples from erzberg had one of the highest copper contents ever found yet no matter how rich it was herdsburg was virtually impossible to reach but on april 5th 1967 with authorization from the indonesian government freeport decided to try to build its mind freeport hired bechtel a california engineering firm with a reputation for building things in places no one else could but even bechtel's engineers were stunned by irian jaya to even reach hertzberg engineers would have to build a 75 mile road through some of the toughest terrain on earth first through the labyrinth of mangrove swamps hugging the coast then through the seemingly impenetrable jungles of the lowlands and finally over mountains that rose like walls up to sixteen thousand feet high they had no airport no seaport and no place for helicopters to land well the first thing was put to build a dock area and to put in a road well both the dock area in the mangroves and the and the beginning of the road you had to drop everything down from helicopters you had to drop people down from helicopters to sew off trees to make platforms where the choppers could land to bring in supplies they would get their people into choppers put them in a horse with a chainsaw the people would come down from the chopper with their chainsaw going now remember they're dropping down on a solid canvas of treetops so they would have to cut their way down to the floor of the jungle as the helicopter tries to hover and the master who's inside the helicopter is watching to make sure that this guy doesn't start bouncing around back and forth you can be slammed against the tree people have been killed this way as crews cleared helicopter landing sites road building began workers came from all over the world to take on the incredible challenge among them was a young indonesian from sumatra named ilyas hamid when i was selected to come here i was a little bit afraid because i heard there were almost no people in this place they gave me their support and told me to leave my faith to god engineers dredged tons of gravel from riverbeds trying to create the foundation of a road in the worst places it took as much as 50 cubic yards of gravel to build one foot of road overnight while the road builders slept the road they had built the day before often sank into the swamp in places bechtel built two miles of road for every mile that survived working in this place was very difficult i thought that after digging mud for three to six feet i would get to hard soil but in fact we were still finding mud after we had dug more than 30 feet in one day we could make only 15 to 20 feet of road as the road inched forward landslides buried tractors trucks fell into rivers helicopters sank into swamps and that was the easy part [Music] 50 miles from the coast the sheer wall of irian's backbone rose up as steep as 70 degrees the mountain tops were razor sharp ridges in places only two feet wide with vertical drops on either side yet 25 miles of road had to be built over those mountains if hertzberg was to be reached [Music] if you're willing to put enough s-curves into the road you can put a road up almost any slope then the problem is to put the road along the ridge grass now what the bechtel did is from helicopters they dropped down very small bulldozers bulldozers that are the size of small lawn mowers they would drop these down and these bulldozers would cut off the top part of the ridgeback and then slightly larger bulldozers would come in bechtel went through six size bulldozers between these very small lawnmower thai bulldozers until they got to the big boys the size of a house which eventually did build the road so you started getting a flat ridge line and then you started going down in s curves going down to the bottom tremendously difficult bulldozers would fall over the edge who knows where they ended up the bulldozers pushed forward [Music] drivers kept one eye on the dizzying drops below them and the other on the crumbling cliffs above no one knew if he would live or die one day my bulldozer broke down and the helicopter could not bring a spare part the next morning my friend an american whose bulldozer was working replaced me as the leader of the work after only half an hour the land he was working on collapsed and his bulldozer slid down into a canyon as he fell a tree branch speared him right through the chest and killed him by 1971 after nearly four years victory seemed in sight but seven miles short of earthsburg the road builders ran into a towering 2000 foot cliff bechtel's engineers had an ingenious solution a helicopter carried a 9 000 foot long nylon rope to a platform at the future mine with this bolted in place workers hoisted up ever thicker ropes until the line was strong enough to hold steel cables as thick as a man's arm this web of steel became the longest aerial tramway of its day and one of the steepest its cars rose 2 000 feet in less than a mile but no one anticipated the mysterious vibrations that shook its cables vibrations would be so strong they had to stop everything because the aura cars would vibrate right off the cable they call in a swiss mathematician he said these cables are like the strings and a very fine violin if they're a bit out of tune the violin sounds lousy he recalculated speeds and stresses since then everything has gone very smooth [Music] with the tram in place freeport could lift men and equipment all the way to the mine entrance at the tramway's base bechtel built mine offices and an ore processing mill after five years of battling aryan jaya the herdsburg mine was ready for operation at a cost of over a billion dollars but engineers had to solve another problem how were they going to get thousands of tons of ore down the mountain by 1972 engineers had met the challenge of building a road through irian jaya miners could begin digging the huge deposits of copper and gold discovered there soon they were mining thousands of tons of ore per day but they also faced a new challenge how to ship that oar from irian jaya's faraway mountains to the rest of the world trucks and trams couldn't carry enough ore per day to make erzberg profitable engineers came up with a simple solution to moving the oar let it fall newly mined ore begins its journey to the world through a series of ore passes these giant shoots send it plummeting 2 000 feet to the base of the tram as the ore hits the ground it breaks into smaller pieces making it easier to move conveyor belts rush the faulnor to a mill inside the mill it pours into the world's largest ore crushers some nearly 40 feet in diameter whirling inside these enormous drums thousands of steel balls attack the ore grinding it into smaller rocks and finally into a powder at the mill workers mix powdered ore with water to create a concentrated liquid slurry of copper and gold but this concentrate is still 10 000 feet high and 70 miles from the sea gravity gets it there mill workers pump the concentrate into a pipeline running beside the road after 20 miles the descent becomes so steep that gravity alone carries the concentrate another 50 miles to the sea piled in barns by the ocean awaiting shipment to smelters around the world the product of hundreds of millions of dollars and years of hazardous work looks like nothing but a huge pile of dirt but in fact it's pay dirt when it's smelted each ton yields nearly 700 pounds of copper thirty grams of gold and another thirty grams of silver we mine the ore at fourteen thousand feet and we sell it at sea level and that's a 75 mile distance between those two nobody else does that in december 1972 the first ship loaded with ore from the erzberg mine sailed from irian giant by the 1980s hertzberg was a huge open pit mine [Music] the ancient glacial meadow sketched by jean-jacques dozy echoed with the sounds of one of the world's most ambitious mining operations [Music] but freeport knew that big as it was erzberg wouldn't last forever the company sent geologists deep into the surrounding mountains to search for an even bigger body of war a mother load that would make mining and erie and jaya profitable long after erzberg had played [Music] out it was a dirty dangerous thrilling job for a few exceptional men and one exceptional woman we spent many times really running for the helicopter you'd be just exhausted and you'd just get in and almost collapse but it was either that or spend the night and it was very cold up there at night in the early 1970s frank nelson was one of the first geologists to explore the wilds of irian jaya working with him was his wife eleanor also a geologist our first chore really was developing a map first topographic and at the same time geologic we had one camera that we mounted below the helicopter that frank would work on a remote control and i took handheld pictures out than with the door of the helicopter just open the door and point the camera out and sort of surprise our drillers sometimes they say who in the hell is that up there i'll leave you sitting at the edge of the seat of the feet off the edge and shooting straight down and trying to get a montage a mosaic of of the area and even these big rough tough maori drillers they were impressed by that so that one cool woman people were not uh familiar with the natives and we were lucky enough to have more direct day-by-day contact with them and you got to really like them a lot of people feared them they look pretty uh dramatic i mean with painted faces and you know bones in the nose and bows and arrows and they were ominous looking but actually when you got to know them they had a great sense of humor we used to ask them for the fun of it and they always would say well not us but over in the other canyon those fellas yeah they make and they go over there and say oh not us but those those fellas had by the 1980s the erzberg open pit mine was no longer profitable and was shut down but by then frank and eleanor nelson and other geologists had discovered huge underground copper deposits nearby it was a rich find but it wasn't the mother lode freeport had been searching for in fact in the mid-1980s freeport almost quit mining in arian jaya as a new technology threatened to destroy the world demand for copper fiber optic cable was revolutionizing world telephone systems many believed it would soon make copper telephone wire obsolete but in 1984 a new chief executive took over at freeport james robert moffett was a field geologist who'd spent years exploring for oil and minerals he wasn't ready to give up on arien jaya he believed in the mother lode i looked at new guinea and saw papua new guinea with hundreds of minds that had been explored over the last 150 years and here in jaya with basically the small hertzberg mine and it's what we call stateline geology it happens all the time just because this terrain was so horrible uh in terms of trying to explore it and people quit at the papua new guinea border and they begin to to to tell themselves that this state line really was some sort of a geologic boundary well that's ridiculous geology doesn't know political boundaries and it never has it never will [Music] moffett was convinced there was more gold in irian giants primeval hills he told his geologists to find it as it happened a freeport geologist in irian jaya had been thinking about gold and staring at a mountain called grossberg less than two miles from the earthsburg mine every morning i'd look up and i'd see the outcrop i'd see that mountain sitting up there and i'd think to myself gee there really should be something up there it literally drove me nuts to stand down at the bottom of that mountain and look up at it and know that there was a rock up there that i hadn't been on and that was an itch that i just had to scratch and after about two years we finally got a chance to do it [Music] the rocks dave potter collected on grossberg assayed at one to two grams of gold per ton [Music] it was enough to justify further investigation [Music] potter set up diamond drills and took core samples [Music] the first one came back which was an angle hole that went directly under the outcrop and not only did it have gold in it it also had copper values and for the first time i started thinking to myself there's something more here than just a gold deposit the one that really drove it home was a third the last hole that we drilled it went over about 1500 feet deep and out of that 1500 feet all of it but about 90 to 100 feet came back with copper values that were ore grade in other words they were on the order of one to two percent copper on the order of one to as high as five grams per ton gold that hole was when i suddenly felt my god this is big big was an understatement grossberg made mining history dave potter's hunch led freeport to a billion tons of ore the biggest gold deposit and the third biggest copper deposit ever found give mr moffatt the credit for maintaining uh the property when he could have taken probably 75 million dollars for it and in the early 80s and walked away clean you know now grassberg itself in the ground is worth over 40 billion dollars 75 million 40 billion good choice but as the first euphoria faded a sobering realization took over [Music] a wall of cliffs blocked the earthsburg road from reaching the grossberg to mine its bonanza freeport would have to haul the world's biggest trucks and shovels up irian irianjaya's nearly vertical cliffs to a mountain even more remote than herzberg at erzberg engineers had achieved the incredibly difficult now at grossberg they faced the impossible grossberg is the world's richest gold mine it's also one of the most productive and cost efficient working 24 hours a day seven days a week its miners dig six hundred thousand tons of war in a single day to dig this staggering amount of ore they must use the world's biggest mining equipment gigantic osiris-electric shovels picking up 80 tons of war in a single scoop and the komatsu 930 the leviathan of ortrox carrying over 300 tons in a single load other mines use this colossal equipment but none has faced the task of transporting it up sheer cliffs in a remote and primitive land to a mountain peak nearly 14 000 feet high in the nineteen eighties this seemed impossible the herzberg tramway can carry only fifteen tons a single kamatsu ore truck weighs over 200 tons [Music] towering cliffs blocked the earthsburg road from reaching the grossberg site in the late 1980s the grassberg miners faced this daunting challenge and won this is the heat road heat stands for heavy equipment access trail the heat road is unlike any other highway ever built [Music] [Applause] the heat road begins at an elevation about 8 000 feet and traverses up the mountainside for about seven miles and comes out at about 13 500 feet some of the grades are in excess of 22 to 30 percent branching off from the main road just below the grossberg the heat road zigzags straight up hill into the clouds until it reaches the mine freeport's stairway to heaven the largest single contributing factor to this mine is the heat rope if we didn't have the heat road grassberg mine would not today be moving 600 000 tons a day over this nightmare of a road colossal trucks and shovels must be brought up piece by piece like this ore truck chassis weighing 40 tons in places the road seems to defy the laws of physics as its grades approach the maximum angle a fully loaded vehicle can climb the heat road shouldn't exist if you look at the heat from down below you don't even know what it is when i bring people up for their first visit they look and they just say what is that what's going on up there many said this crucial road could not be built or if it could its cost would be astronomical they hadn't counted on freeport's veteran road builder ilyas hamid freeport asked several independent contractors from australia to give them an estimate as to what it would cost to build a road and the estimates came in in dozens and dozens of millions of dollars he heard about these incredible estimates and he thought to himself this is crazy i can do this for a lot less money than what these people are asking so his expat supervisor agreed to let him try first my boss took me to see the situation from the helicopter i told him i needed a bulldozer mechanics and fuel my boss said okay i give you everything you need so the guy just drove his bulldozer from the top to the bottom it took him a while he didn't do it overnight but he just zigzagged back and forth it was the hardest work i've ever done the bulldozer was always in danger of falling because the ground was very slippery and had very little soil on top so the challenge was very big when you drive a bulldozer on a slope as steep as a slope going up to grassberg you can go over any time he almost did several times his nerve endings are so much better than ours in sensing that fine line between toppling over in your bulldozer and dying and being able to make that cut on which other people can follow behind you that road was built for under two million dollars incredible just because of one guy who had whatever it took brave enough to go and drive his bulldozer from the top to the bottom he's kind of a mellow guy but inside i think he's he's a tiger and he loves the challenge and he made something amazing happen he maybe doesn't know much about the world of physics maybe he just says you want a road from a to b and i'll get you there the heat road conquered irian giants mountains but steepness is not the only obstacle to be overcome at nearly 14 000 feet operating one of the world's biggest mines is a daily dangerous challenge most mornings begin in brilliant sunshine but by midday clouds sweep in from the sea [Music] within seconds visibility at grossberg can drop from nearly perfect to nearly zero [Music] most days the grossberg miners must operate their leviathan machinery and fog so dense they can barely see the 200-ton kamatsu ore trucks with their tires as tall as a house could squash a smaller vehicle flat without stopping now they've got very strict rules about what to do once a fog comes in having your lights on being x number of meters away from any other truck who has priority and these safety measures are followed extremely closely otherwise people would be dying all over the place or truck drivers like alexander cromcion have been trained to handle dangerous weather if the fog is closer than 50 feet i park my truck and wait until it disappears i'm never frightened although i worry a bit because the road is very narrow and slippery like many crosberg employees alexander kramcion is an indigenous arianese his truck driving skills are even more impressive than they seem there is i had never operated a vehicle before the company tested me when i came on the first day of training i was a little confused but it did not find it difficult after that 20 of my people are local aryan people local people who have never seen a toyota before or a car and they come up and they're driving 300 ton haul trucks uh that that's a challenge in itself and we're pretty proud of our workforce and i've i've worked at numerous mines and i put my people up against any other mines in the world prospers miners won't be stopping work anytime soon geologists believe the deposit is even bigger than originally estimated and may still contain billions of tons of ore but freeport has not given up its quest for new bonanzas of copper and gold the search has sent geologists on death defying explorations today the grassberg mine remains the biggest gold deposit ever found freeport geologists continue their search for an even bigger one today's scientists have tools unimagined by the explorers of the past they pour over magnetic imagery and high resolution satellite photography zeroing in on potential ore bodies they call hot spots without leaving the comfort and safety of their lab but someone's got to evaluate those hot spots and the only way to do that is the old-fashioned way jay pennington's morning commute is a little different from most we just pop out of the helicopter basically two at a time with a sampling pack and a in a survival pack and then we're one at a time down the hoist say from 120 feet so like a 12 story building the first time i was lowered out of a helicopter it was it was a extremely invigorating and it was scary and it was fun all at the same time you got to have ultimate faith in your pilot the hoist master who's going to have your life on the line there for about 90 seconds and then the people that maintain the equipment both the hoist and the helicopter so you get through that and let's face it you can't do the work without that confidence as soon as you have that the rest of it can be as fun as you want [Music] exploration geologists like jay pennington are the front line of freeport search for the next grossberg that's good stuff despite all the high-tech science that leads him to a hot spot jay works with tools any california 49er would recognize eight hours a day he pans for gold like an old west prospector in some of the last true wilderness on earth a lot of the times when you hit the ground you got to feel that no western or no non-native has has ever been where you are at that moment right there so it you have the potential to stumble over a 50-ounce nugget of gold and just as easily as you can step on a a rare poisonous snake when jay finishes sampling one hot spot he radios for the helicopter to pick him up and take him to another one but when a helicopter leaves jay in the jungle there's no guarantee it can return can't fly if you can't see you don't play a mountain tag with a helicopter it's not advisable there have been times when uh you wind up in a in a sandwich of clouds okay either one can get you from the top down or from the bottom up and if you get a helicopter stuck in that sandwich you're asking for real trouble and then i'm there for the night and that's happened a lot when you're stuck out there it's miserable beyond all the adventure lies the ultimate dream an ore body even bigger than grossberg in 1994 a canadian exploration company claimed to have found it briax announced it had unearthed an enormous gold deposit on the neighboring island of borneo how enormous 200 million ounces of gold worth 70 billion dollars as brieck stock skyrocketed the indonesian government asked freeport to develop the borneo bonanza but when freeport's geologists finally got a chance to test briex ore samples they made a shocking discovery what they were finding was particles of gold in that rock powder that were 10 20 50 times the size of the rest of the powder so they were obviously salted the gold that we found in our samples that we had drilled and processed the few grains of gold we did find were very small miniscule compared to what they what they found and i just told us that somebody had falsified the information by adding gold to the samples the brie x gold strike was a hoax freeport executives asked michael de guzman briax's chief geologist to meet with them and explain the falsified ore samples it was d-day right there that was when steve was going to make the first confrontation and say hey guys you know what gives here we we don't think here on the level and he never turned up for the meeting and never turned up after that anywhere we had a had a message from jakarta coming in where they had heard that that the guzman had disappeared out of helicopter and he was the only person in the back seat of the helicopter and supposedly opened the door and jumped out indonesian authorities claimed to have found a guzman's body and ruled his death a suicide but some believe the case is not closed you know the whole thing about his remains and how they were identified it's all very questionable and i kind of feel like he's probably hanging out in the philippines somewhere enjoying his money despite the briex hoax freeport continues looking for another grossberg a geological holy grail hidden in the mountains of irian jaya [Music] like true grail seekers those who have braved the quest have been transformed the country itself is so spectacularly beautiful that you well i always said it was a religious experience to go to work in the morning because the sun was just hitting the tops of the peaks and it was uh it's just a wonderful place some of the things that i'm going to remember for the rest of my life and things that i have a hard time talking to other people about are things like being in a helicopter at eighteen thousand feet at uh six o'clock in the morning and watching the sun rise over that mountain it's magic it's just it's unbelievable when we were finally leaving for the last time ellie and i were in the helicopter and you can hear this the whole mob in natives came running down the wall trotting now all dressed up in their winery saying well you'll be back boys yeah you'll be back i thought we couldn't look at each other both choked up on the way down knowing that was one of the best parts of your life to finish then i think the men who build this mind i think are really an unusual bunch from the standpoint that not only were they hard workers you can find hard workers almost anywhere in the world i think it was a vision a vision that they had which i think was inspired by the kind of terrain they were working in no place has a physical toughness and splendor that ariane has it was really a challenge men against nature but nature at her most unforgiving nature at the toughest i don't think you can find any place on earth when nature is any tougher than this [Music] grossberg and erzberg will forever remain monuments to those who discovered them built them and made them work a tribute to the human courage and determination that against stupendous odds erected a superstructure above the clouds at the ends of the earth [Music] off the coast of japan there is a superstructure so immense it can be seen from space the world's first airport in the midst of the sea the largest man-made island of its day the longest bridge of its kind and one of the world's architectural masterpieces [Music] but its brilliant design could not conquer a hostile earth today low-tech ingenuity saves its high-tech engineering is kansai the airport of the future or is it doomed to sink beneath the waves [Music] [Music] japan where modern skyscrapers dwarf the monuments of ages past where timeless serenity mingles with industrial might [Music] and one of the world's engineering marvels rises from the sea [Music] a superstructure for the 21st century the mile long terminal at kansai international airport hovers like a giant silver bird atop a man-made island in osaka bay [Music] graceful in design japan's aerodynamic airport is a triumph of construction and a technological wonder it was quite extraordinary to me that when the building first opened it was getting 10 000 visitors a day who were not there to fly they were there to look at the building and that said something [Music] to build the world's first ocean airport architects and engineers probe deep into the laws of nature searching for answers to the awesome challenges before them [Music] thousands of workers labored seven years building the biggest man-made island of its day more than three miles from shore in water 60 feet deep then chronic it with the world's longest building the biggest public works project of the 20th century the airport is the first place and last place people normally see at your city so you want it to represent something about your city you want it to look good you want them to have a favorable impression when they arrive and when they leave we don't build big cathedrals anymore but we build big airports today kansai international is a glittering masterpiece widely regarded as one of the world's most beautiful airports and one of modern history's most daring engineering projects [Music] before kansai no one had ever built an island in water so deep or so far from land from steel girders to workers lunches everything had to be transported to the construction site by boat [Music] to create the island work crews had to move 750 million cubic feet of earth pound a million steel columns into the ocean floor and labor over 10 million man hours i scouted the location by helicopter and i thought oh my god this might be a big challenge why did japan take on the challenge of building an airport on the sea because daunting as that challenge was building kansai international airport on land would have been next to impossible [Music] kansai is a 10 000 square mile region in central japan straddling the audit of honshu some 300 miles southwest of tokyo within its boundaries lie two of japan's most important cities the sprawling industrial centers of osaka and kobe in the 1960s kansai cities were losing ground japan's imports and exports flowed through tokyo to compete with tokyo kansai needed a new international airport this airport was not only very important for kansai but also for the whole japanese economy before kansai airport manufacturing companies based in kansai had to send their cargo all the way to tokyo to ship it out of the country that was very inconvenient osaka's airport itami sat in the middle of a residential neighborhood dangerously hemmed in by buildings the constant roar of jet engines disturbed its neighbors there's no way that you can get around it the airplanes fly over they make noise they have particles of emission from the jet engines and those end up in people's yards on people's roofs and in people's ears when they're trying to watch television or have a barbecue too many families lived in that area so the potential there for was a dangerous one if something ever went wrong thank goodness it didn't at the far end of the runway just on the approach there was a school if you were always cognizant of the school being there and which is not the greatest thing expanding itami was out of the question but so was finding land for a new airport in heavily populated japan there was little empty land and few people willing to give up land they owned in 1969 tokyo began construction of an international airport at narita a distant suburb largely populated by farmers when the government confiscated farmland to build the airport protests exploded [Music] outraged farmers besieged the narita construction site leftist radicals fired rockets across the runway police arrested more than 3 000 activists seven people died protests delayed construction of narita airport for nearly a decade in the narrator case the government carried the plan forward without giving much information to the people you might say the government forced its plan on the people and that caused a strong movement against the construction the best way to deal with noise pollution and angry neighbors was to avoid them all together kansai decided to build its new airport on the waters of osaka bay there's nobody out there to sue them in the middle of osaka bay maybe maybe a marlin here or there or something like that with no neighbors to disturb a water airport could stay open 24 hours a day making it even more competitive with tokyo but the plan had other perils osaka's fishermen might oppose a water airport as bitterly as narita's farmers had battled an airport on land fish travel their own roots which the fishermen know if there's any change in those roots it's very difficult for the fisherman to catch fish it's not like the fish travel along marked highways to find them again is very difficult to avoid another narita authorities offered the fishermen a huge fee as compensation for disturbing their fishing grounds the fishermen accepted [Music] politically the path was now clear but the project's troubles were only beginning [Music] by locating their airport on water kansai's planners had avoided battles with outraged citizens over land yet they would soon find themselves battling a far more powerful force the force of nature itself japan's four main islands have been called the most geologically treacherous real estate on earth nine major earthquakes greater than magnitude 7 struck in the 20th century alone killing over 150 000 people thousands of smaller temblors shake japan every month an earthquake's worst damage is often to structures built on landfill which liquefies when shaken when it isn't shaking japan is reeling from some of the deadliest storms on the planet since world war ii hundreds of typhoons have ravaged the japanese coastline killing nearly 7 000 people a typhoon cyclonic winds can whip up what meteorologists call a storm surge a dangerous rise in sea level on september 21 1934 a storm surge raised the level of osaka bay 10 feet for several hours that typhoon killed 3 000 people three miles from shore the new kansai airport would be fully exposed to a typhoon's fury would a typhoon someday tear the new multi-billion dollar airport apart would its foundations dissolve on an earthquake would storms or earthquakes sever its lengths to land the new kansai airport had to survive some of nature's most powerful onslaughts engineers designed an island two and a half miles long and nearly four thousand feet wide framed by a huge rectangular sea wall whose perimeter would be seven miles long into this massive frame they would pour 750 million cubic feet of earth [Music] it seemed like a simple plan a larger version of other projects japanese engineers had successfully completed many times before in landstarp kansai the shore is lined with industries built on man-made land [Music] but three miles from shore conditions were very different the seabed is something like a hundred meters or so depth of soft clay so soft in fact that if you could drain the seaway you wouldn't be able to welcome it as a marsh tests showed that the airport island would rest on two levels of ocean bottom clay the upper layer called alluvial clay didn't worry engineers they had built on it many times before [Music] but three miles from shore there was a deeper older stratum called diluvial clay extending a thousand feet below the alluvial layer [Music] engineers had never built anything on this diluvial clay no one was sure how it would react when the world's largest man-made island began pressing down on it so the new problem is how to predict the compression of deep-seated old stiff clay that's why i think the first case in the human engineering history in order to know the condition of the foundation ground we developed a method of sampling the clay itself we calculated things like strength and pressure density correlation to learn the characteristics of the ground scientists analyzed core samples from the ocean floor and gave differing predictions of how far the airport might sink into the clay some believed it would sink only 19 feet others insisted it could sink as deep as 25 feet officials made a fateful decision to save money they rejected the predictions of deeper sinking and planned an airport that would sink only 19 feet [Music] january 1987 with prayers for the safety of the workers construction of kansai international airport begins the first task is to strengthen the soft ocean floor clay so it can support the airport's immense weight [Music] to strengthen the seabed engineers use a well-tested method known as sand draining specially designed ships float over the construction site first spreading a five foot layer of sand over the ocean floor then hammering one million pipes deep into the clay it's a fully automated process controlled by shipboard computers next enormous barges equipped with pile drivers force sand into each pipe finally the computer-controlled ships pull out each pipe leaving a million columns of sand when the finished airport presses down on the waterlogged clay its weight will squeeze the water from the clay into the sand piles draining the clay to make it harder but the sand drains cannot reach the deeper diluvial clay nothing can be done to stabilize it [Music] with sand drains in place work on the sea wall begins to keep waves from washing away its rubble slope seawall workers must armor its surface with massive stones feet below the surface divers guide these armor stones into position the divers are veterans of many underwater construction projects but none as deep and as far from shore as kansai airport they face deadly hazards in the turbulent ocean depths at this place we set stones that are about one to two tons each in the water it was far from the shore so there were bigger waves it was a challenge for us we did it even in tough situations like in bad weather one guy had his leg amputated at the thigh because the waves moved to stone and it smashed into his leg we were always close to death in a way despite the dangers work on the sea seawall continued as workers maneuvered 69 gigantic steel chambers into place each of these mammoth casings was 75 feet high 75 feet in diameter and weighed over 200 tons [Music] pile drivers pounded them into the ocean floor to form the corners of the sea wall workers placed 48 000 four-pointed concrete blocks along the sea walls south and western edges where the sea was strongest these strange-looking blocks are designed to dissipate the force of breaking waves by june 1989 two and a half years after work began the sea wall was finished now the airport builders had to find enough soil to fill it on the mainland crews worked round the clock excavating three entire mountains huge barges transported the excavated soil to the airport site for three years a fleet of 80 ships dumped earth inside the seawall until it rose over a hundred feet above the ocean floor [Music] global positioning systems directed each barge through its onboard computers telling it exactly where to dump each load the island fill combined three different sizes of coarse rock and gravel engineers hoped this mixture would resist liquefaction in an earthquake slowly the airport island emerged from the sea despite violent protests the same leftist radicals who assaulted narita airport launched a mortar attack on one of the quarry supplying the island's fill no one is hurt but the exploding water rounds ignite a forest fire which rages for hours it is only one of more than two dozen attacks on the airport project during construction planting bombs firing rockets and setting fires the radicals destroyed equipment and injured four people but work never faltered while some workers built the island other crews were busy linking it to land in the fall of 1987 giant floating cranes brought the first pre-assembled bridge pier to osaka bay anchoring it on pilings driven into the seabed by the spring of 1989 29 of these piers stood in line between the airport island and the mainland the gigantic cranes returned with enormous steel modules each over 500 feet long and weighing over 4 000 tons bolted together they formed a double-decked truss bridge over two miles long one-third longer than the golden gate bridge with a price tag of over a billion dollars its upper deck was a highway its lower deck a railroad track flexible joints connected its spans so the giant bridge would bend not break in a typhoon's deadly winds [Music] by march 1990 the bridge was built and the airport island was nearly complete this man-made island was created by the effort sweat blood and tears of over 10 000 people who worked very hard but the island builders celebration was a muted one by then they had discovered a new and relentless threat an enemy so powerful it could defeat them spring 1990 kansai airport's man-made island is nearly finished construction firms prepare for the monumental task of building the passenger terminal but in march engineers make an alarming discovery which threatens to destroy the project [Music] kansai airport is sinking into the sea airport officials had expected the island to settle some 19 feet into the soft seabed but by march 1990 it had sunk 27 feet and was still sinking over two inches every month no one knew when or if the sinking would stop no one knows exactly what you know what to do because it's quite far different from our past experience it's big size and a very heavy load these two factors combined give rise the effect of waking up the sleeping lions the revelation stunned osaka and the nation the international press dubbed kansai japan's sinking airport some compared it to history's most notorious engineering blunder the leaning tower of pisa after 20 years of planning three years of construction and billions of dollars it appeared that kansai airport might never be built [Music] what had seemed genius now appeared to be merely hubris as public outrage grew the president of kansai airport resigned engineers scrambled to find a solution if there was one we cannot stop the compression of this type of soil because we can cope with the soil with various new techniques down to 50 or 60 meters depth but now the soil equation is 200 meter deep so we can't apply any sort of artificial techniques to keep the airport above sea level workers piled an extra 11 and a half feet of soil atop the island at a cost of 150 million dollars they dropped a 20 ton weight 100 feet onto the runway to compacted soil they decided to pave the runway with asphalt because asphalt would absorb earth movements better than concrete yet their greatest problem remained unsolved it was time to construct kansai international's passenger terminal but how could they build it on a sinking island while engineers debated the terminals architects perfected its design noriaki okabe had spent 25 years in europe working with world renowned italian architect renzo piano together they had created some of the world's most remarkable buildings including the famed pompadour center in paris [Music] but at kansai they faced the challenge of their careers the kansai terminal had to be small enough to fit on a man-made island yet big enough to house all the complex functions of a modern international airport high enough to inspire passengers with its beauty yet low enough to allow air traffic controllers an unrestricted view of every airplane on the tarmac it seemed an architectural paradox architects usually get stimulated by looking at the site before the work starts this project was unique because there was no site yet there was no ground seeking new sources of inspiration the architects turned to the structures of nature nature's geometries solve their most difficult problem how to make the terminal both high and low answer the toroid the remarkably versatile shape of magnetic fields convection currents bicycle tires donuts and fruits in its architect's eyes the enormous kansai terminal is only the small visible portion of an immense toroid over 20 miles in diameter circling through the earth [Music] the toroid shape allows the building's center to soar 85 feet high while its wings taper to 20 feet inspiring visitors giving the control tower a clear view of aircraft and making architectural history it is the most pervasive form in the natural world the toroid and so far as i know this was the first time it had been you certainly first have been used a big structure since kansai was designed the toroid has become a very fashionable form particularly architects working with british engineers who've mastered how to use this form but it was innovatory at its time the toroid solved the problem of designing the passenger terminal but still unsolved was the biggest problem of all how to construct one of the world's biggest buildings on an island sinking into the sea by the spring of 1990 an international team of architects and engineers had created a cutting-edge design for kansai airport's passenger terminal the blueprints were ready but the terminal could not be built until the builders solved a puzzling problem the completed terminal would weigh only half as much as the vast amount of earth excavated for its foundation from an island that was sinking into the sea the lighter terminal would not sink as fast as the heavier island as island and terminal pulled apart the massive structure was certain to crack the problem is not the building is sinking into the ground but that the ground is sinking faster than the building people don't realize but the building actually floats in the earth that's one of the reasons they have to have basements they're like ships and that's particularly true of new earth so cancer airport has a ballast of a quarter of a million tons of very dense iron ore in it as they prepared to build the terminal engineers lined its foundation with an eight foot thick layer of crushed iron ore hoping the extra weight would help the terminal sink as fast as the island [Music] on april 24 1991 terminal construction began it would take nearly three years to complete following the architects blueprints workers erect some 30 steel trusses to support the roof [Music] each of these massive trusses weighs over 200 tons then workers assembled the terminal skeleton of 250 ribs each forged in england and carried by ship to japan they install nearly 5 000 panels of glass on its sweeping front carefully encasing each panel in a rubber frame so it will move not break if an earthquake or a typhoon sways the building [Music] they cover the roof with 90 000 stainless steel tiles tested to withstand fierce typhoon winds and violent seismic shaking with pains taking effort workers lay each of these tiles individually by hand high ocean winds make their task even more difficult and sometimes impossible [Music] by 1993 the terminal's enormous shape rose above the airport island over a million architects engineers and workers around the world had contributed to its construction [Music] today noriaki okabe wanders with pride through a superstructure widely proclaimed as one of the most brilliantly designed airport terminals in the world [Music] [Applause] it's a very big build in kansai it's possibly the longest building in history that is not a factory but one huge room occupied by people but what's very striking is the very intimate relationship it sets up between you the person moving through and the building that is making way for you leading you through guiding you through this is a very extraordinary sense to get in what's a highly technological enormous building i think that's one of its most extraordinary achievements arriving by car rail or hydrofoil passengers enter what the architects call the canyon a vast open space 100 feet high and nearly a thousand feet long four cavernous stories linked by humming escalators and whirring elevators designed to impress but also to inform the reason why this space is so huge is so that people can see where they are going any spaces in this structure can be seen from wherever you are as they move beyond the canyon passengers don't have to navigate a sprawling multi-terminal complex as in many other airports [Music] domestic and international arrivals and departures are vertically stacked on the four floors of the terminal building passengers travel up and down a central set of escalators which carries them to arriving and departing domestic and international flights finally they emerge into the terminal's spectacular departures area a kind of aviation cathedral stretching over a mile long making kansai terminal the longest building in the world automated trains whisk passengers to its 41 aircraft gates travel time from the central terminal to the end of each wing is only 90 seconds an ingenious system solves a baffling problem how do you air condition the world's longest building if you blow a big air jet into a very large space it travels so far now what we did on kansai which i think is quite innovative was to create a shape of ceiling which was similar to an air jet shape and to stick the jet to the ceiling if you make a jet of air stick to the ceiling then it travels up to twice as far as it would if it was in free space and it will cause a much bigger circulation current gigantic yet graceful 18 nozzles send air flowing along the ceiling into sheets of smooth fabric which keep it circulating colorful mobiles reveal the moving air [Music] it's the first time it had been done at such a big scale and it's the first time in which the shape of the roof and structure was exactly shaped to the decelerating air jet it's a building that is most in step with what is happening in the sciences and must herald the future but when it was finished kansai terminal's future remained in doubt as the island beneath it continued to sink even with its iron ore ballast the terminal would almost certainly crack as the heavier island beneath its sink engineers devised a surprisingly simple solution in the basement 900 concrete columns support the building's massive weight but that's not all they do as the terminal sinks sensors on the columns alert computers in the central control room technicians scan the computer screens looking for trouble spots this screen shows the current subsidence of the terminal building the areas in red have less subsidence and those in blue have more when the computers warn that the sinking island threatens to crack the terminal workers raise or lower the columns in the endangered area to keep it level with the ground [Music] they use powerful hydraulic jacks which can move columns up to 15 inches if necessary [Music] workers slide iron plates under the jacked up pillars to hold them up after the jacks have been removed [Music] it's no different than sliding a matchbook under the leg of a wobbly coffee table but kansai terminal has 900 legs and weighs nearly three million tons it's a solution which as i understand it has been used before in japan and it might seem a bit primitive but i have no reason to suspect that it's anything but perfect for the problem in fact everything in the kansai terminal's basement is designed to move up and down air conditioning and other systems are bolted to the ceiling instead of the floor doorways feature several inches of extra room overhead in their zeal to save the kansai terminal engineers tried to think of everything this terminal building is being adjusted at all times i'm on the stairs which connect the first floor and the basement the step where i'm standing right now was the height of the floor when the airport opened in the last four years we jacked it up three times and as a result we added two more steps here measures like these helped the airport cope with its sinking island but they also delayed its completion by over a year on september 4th 1994 kansai international airport finally opened for business the emperor's son crown prince naruhito and his wife princess masako attended the opening ceremonies thousand police stood guard in case radicals attacked [Music] as they celebrated the airport's proud builders could not know that nature's fury would soon assault their masterpiece [Music] dawn january 17 1995. [Music] kansai international airport has been open 15 months as this day begins it will be severely tested [Music] at 5 46 a.m on january 17th a devastating 7.2 earthquake rocks the kansai region the massive templar is the deadliest quake to strike japan since the great tokyo earthquake of 1923. i was still in bed because it was quite early in the morning it was a very huge up-thrusting movement dishes jumped out of the cupboard in my house i had never experienced an earthquake that big before hardest hit is the city of kobe the city's wharf rises ten feet cranes topple and a harbor break water sinks rail lines and major highways buckle the quake kills more than five thousand people and injures over twenty five thousand more than three hundred thousand people lose their homes kansai international airport is only 18 miles from the epicenter when the earthquake hit the first thing i thought about was my family [Music] fearing the worst officials rush to the airport outside the terminal they find a cracked sidewalk and few other signs of damage i raced to the airport in my car and arrived before seven o'clock when i rushed into this control room all the machines were operating properly the airport had survived one of nature's deadliest assaults or had it [Music] with so much devastation nearby it seemed too good to be true when i came to kansai airport we could see kobe was burning although you couldn't see anything wrong i had great anxiety about the airport's invisible parts the inspections confirmed that the airport's anti-earthquake measures had worked engineers had used a mixture of large rocks to build the airport island when the earthquake hit this coarser landfill absorbed the shaking had the phil rocks been smaller the island soil might have liquefied airport buildings would have collapsed as so many other structures did instead the delicate looking passenger terminal proved as tough as its architects had hoped thanks to its ingenious design for example at this bridge that side of the building is fixed and this side has a sliding system to absorb the shock at the time of the kobe earthquake this point moved almost four inches even the terminal's massive glass walls were intact it was important not to transmit the movement of the roof in an earthquake to the glass wall below we designed a system which absorbed all movements between the two structures by using sliding or rotating joints during the kobe earthquake this system worked so well that not a single pane of glass was broken kansai international remained open throughout the crisis serving as a staging area for arriving rescue teams and supplies the building was in fact the building closest to the epicenter of the earthquake that destroyed kobe that doesn't mean say it was hardest hit because the buildings in kobe were equally hard hit hard but because it'd been designed to cope with all these things it rode it out with any without any damage at all surviving the kobe quake was a triumph for kansai's beleaguered engineers the airport had passed a significant test of its engineering and design three years later it would face another as nature struck again september 22nd 1998 a powerful typhoon slams into the japanese coast killing 10 people and injuring more than 200 winds clocked at 130 miles per hour roar across osaka bay whipping up dangerous waves and sloshing rains by noon the storm's full fury reaches kansai airport the typhoon had increased speed to the point of where we were arriving at the same time and we did have quite strong winds but the difficult part was that people who try to park us on the ground keep them from getting blown away literally right after we landed in fact the airport authority closed the airport because of the the difficulty on the causeway between the mainland and the island it became unusable for vehicular traffic when we were crossing the causeway going to the mainland there was a motorcycle who went down and i there there was a couple of accidents that we had seen so it was smart of them to discontinue by evening the typhoon had passed and kansai airport resumed normal operations [Music] the terminal's roof had suffered minor damage but airport officials felt lucky the typhoon might have threatened the sinking island now standing only 17 feet above sea level [Music] kansai's ingenious jacking system keeps the terminal building level but it cannot stop the island from sinking every year the airport sinks a foot deeper into the sea scientists debate how much farther the island will sink but some believe that if it keeps sinking a typhoon's waves will someday swamp the airport next countermeasure is how to prevent invasion of water we are going to start with this sort of countermeasure maybe five or ten years time or not if the top elevation of the muhammad island goes going down beyond some special value in high tide time or typhoon time it's quite easy to see water to flush inside island that's our greatest concern at the moment airplane cannot land in the pond so long we must be dry all the time to keep out storms engineers must build a higher seawall around the airport but this is not the only challenge they must meet if kansai airport is to survive economically it must expand [Music] since it opened in 1994 its volume of international flights has nearly doubled its single runway can handle 160 000 takeoffs and landings a year by the year 2007 it will reach that number without a second runway kansai will choke on its own traffic the airport plans to build a second runway and terminal on a parallel island connected to the original airport but this island must be built in water even deeper than the first the seabed is even softer scientists believe the second island could sink even farther than the first we have to construct the island on a bad soft foundation since it is impossible to do away with subsidence we are thinking of constructing a second terminal building between the old and the new islands which will float on the sea like a ship then we won't have to worry about it settling at all but sinking isn't the only obstacle to expanding kansai international battling the sinking problem drove the airport's price tag to 15 billion 40 percent over budget interest alone on the airport's debt is 560 million dollars a year [Music] building a second runway will cost an estimated 14 billion dollars more even if it never slides beneath the waves kansai international may sink beneath the crushing burden of its debt and yet the second runway must be built the airport's future and perhaps the lives of its passengers depend on it if you're going to be a major hub airport you're going to really have to have two runways because what happens if something goes wrong what happens if you have an airplane that blows a tire and you're really a hub a hub brings in a lot of a lot of airplanes at one time when you're considering the number of tires on each 747 you blow one tire as far as the airplane is concerned you'd never even know it until you cleared the runway however the carcass is on the runway and you certainly wouldn't want an aircraft following you to encounter that it could be a major disaster both landing gear and or engine wise so they have to sweep the runway and that takes time and when you have you know 10 airplanes or 12 airplanes waiting for arrival it gets to be a very ticklish affair so a second runway is very very important though surrounded by water kansai international airport finds itself between a rock and a hard place hong kong and singapore now have new state-of-the-art airports tokyo's narita is building a second runway to hold its own in the highly competitive world of asian aviation kansai must expand engineers need the second island as much as airport officials do they want to build higher sea walls to keep typhoons from someday swamping the first island to build those walls they must temporarily close the original runway yet the immense cost of saving the airport added to its already huge debt burden may its future kansai international airport may never fulfill its builder's dream of becoming one of asia's leading aviation hubs but somehow it's not concise trouble as most people remember it's kunsai's achievement its landmark design has won the praise of critics the world over and earned the approval of the thousands of awestruck travelers who pass through it each year i think it will be some time before what has been achieved there be fully understood the lessons will be learnt probably in the 21st century more than in the next few years from kansai people will understand more deeply what's been achieved there i believe that the legacy that people are going to remember about the airport is that they built something that was never heard of before for an airport and that even though they had problems they found very good solutions to make it work and in fact became an engineering marvel in several aspects number one that they were able to fill it and then when it didn't settle at the rate that somebody had calculated that they were able to solve that problem and continue to operate whatever its future holds kansai international airport will always be a monument to a bold vision a vision that dared to accomplish something no one had ever tried before a vision that literally moved mountains created land in the midst of the sea and graced japan with one of the world's most beautiful airports you

Channel: Spark

Views: 103,030

Keywords: grasberg mine documentary, grasberg mine, gold mining documentary, grasberg mine pollution, grasberg mine papua, largest gold mine in the world, new guinea, mining, gold, gold mine, gold mining, papua, gold (chemical element), largest gold mine, Science, Technology, Engineering, science documentary, grasberg mine depth, science photography, science explained, Spark, science experiment, gold mines, biggest gold mine in the world, gold rush, mining gold, gold mine in the clouds

Id: MBn17sbM7Xk

Length: 407min 23sec (24443 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021